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THIS MYSTICAL LIFE OF OURS 


By RALPH WALDO TRINE. 


“The Life Books ” 

I know of nothing in the entire range of 
literature more calculated to inspire the young 
than the “ Life Books,” and to renew the soul 
in young and old .—From a Reader. 

WHAT ALL THE WORLD'S A-SEEKING. 

IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE ; or, Fulness of 
Peace, Power, and Plenty. 

The “Life ” Booklets. 

THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 
EVERY LIVING CREATURE. 
CHARACTER-BUILDING THOUGHT POWER. 


THIS MYSTICAL LIFE OF OURS. 

Selections for every week in tho year from 
Mr. Trine’s most popular writings. 


THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., 

NEW YORK 






THIS MYSTICAL 
LIFE OF OURS 


A BOOK OF SUGGESTIVE THOUGHTS 
FOR EACH WEEK THROUGH THE YEAR 


FROM THE COMPLETE WORKS OF 

RALPH WALDO TRINE 

AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE BOOKS” 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL CO. 

PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 















Li*>riAKY of CONGRESS | 
l wo Cooies Received 

SEP 11 ISO, 7 

Coovrorht Bntry 

<§<?/> f 2. (qu 7 
CLASS A XXc., NOi 

/ 8 Q> G 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1896, 1897, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1906, 
By RALPH WALDO TRINE 


Copyright, 1907, 

By RALPH WALDO TRINE 


Published, September, 1907 



THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK 








3 


There is a divine sequence running through¬ 
out the universe. Within and above and be¬ 
low the human will incessantly works the 
Divine will. To come into harmony with it 
and thereby with all the higher laws and 
forces , to come then into league and to work 
in conjunction with them , in order that they 
can work in league and in co?ijunction with 
's, is to come into the chain of this wonder- 
r ul sequence. This is the secret of all suc¬ 
cess. This is to come into the possession of 
unknown riches , into the realization oj un¬ 
dreamed-of powers. 

—In Tune with the Infinite. 








CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I. The Fresh Beginning.3 

II. The Supreme Fact of Human Life . . 6 

III. The Creative Power of Thought . . 10 

IV. The Drawing Power of Mind ... 13 

V. Creating One’s Own Atmosphere . . 16 


VI. The Law of Attraction Works Unceas 


ingly. 19 

VII. The Law of Prosperity .... 23 

VIII. The Law of Habit-Forming . . . .27 

IX. Actualizing One’s Ideals .... 30 

X. Faith and Prayer—Their Nature . . 33 

XI. The Petty Personal and the Larger Uni¬ 
versal . 36 

XII. The Poem Hangs on the Berry-Bush . 39 

XIII. The Influence of Our Prevailing Mental 

States Upon Others. 43 

XIV. Saviors One of Another .... 47 

XV. Not Repression, but Self-Mastery . . 50 

XVI. Thoughts Are Forces. 53 

XVII. All Life from Within. 56 

XVIII. Heredity and the Higher Power . . 60 

XIX. Castles in the Air. 63 






Vlll 


Contents 


PAGE 

„ XX. The Anchor or the Sensitively Organ¬ 
ized .66 

XXI. How We Attract Success or Failure . 69 

XXII. Fear Brings Failure . . . -71 

XXIII. Heart Training Through the Animal 

World. 74 

XXIV. The Secret and the Power of Love . 78 

XXV. Then Give to the World the Best 
You Have, and the Best Will Come 

Back to You.82 

XXVI. Hatred Never Ceases by Hatred, but 

by Love.86 

XXVII. Thought and Its Intelligent Direc¬ 
tion .89 

XXVIII. Will—The Human and the Divine . 92 

XXIX. The Secret of the Highest Power . 95 

XXX. Wisdom: or Interior Illumination . 99 

XXXI. Let There Be Many Windows in Your 

Soul.103 

XXXII. As to the Quality of Our Education 107 
XXXIII. A New Order of Patriotism . . .111 

XXXIV. Men of Exceptional Executive and 

Financial Ability . . . . .116 

XXXV. An Example—A Very Young Old Lady 119 
XXXVI. How Mind Builds Body . . - . 123 

XXXVII. Soul Radiance. 127 

XXXVIII. Intuition: The Voice of the Soul . 131 
XXXIX. Miracles and the Higher Life . . 134 

XL. The Voice of the Higher Self . .137 






Contents 


IX 


XLI. 

XLII. 

XLIII. 

XLIV. 

XLV. 
XL VI. 

XLVII. 

XL VIII. 

XLIX. 

L. 

LI. 

LII. 


PAGE 

The Soul Must Be Made Translucent 
to the Divine. I4I 

Receiving Instruction During Sleep . 144 

The Joseph Type Both Dreams and 
Interprets.148 

Heart Training Through the Animal 

World.152 

To Be at Peace .156 

Courage Begets Strength; Fear Be¬ 
gets Weakness.161 

“And What Is Mine Shall Know My 

Face” .166 

Heredity and Environment—Are We 

Bound by Them?.169 

Preserving One’s Individuality . . 173 

Exclusiveness and Inclusiveness : 

What They Indicate . . . . 177 

The Nature of Real Riches . . 181 

A Method of Attainment . . .185 




. 


THIS MYSTICAL LIFE OF OURS 






I. 


THE FRESH BEGINNING. 

When one awakes from sleep and so returns 
to conscious life, he is in a peculiarly receptive 
and impressionable state. All relations with the 
material world have for a time been shut off, the 
mind is in a freer and more natural state, resem¬ 
bling somewhat a sensitive plate, where impressions 
can readily leave their traces. This is why many 
times the highest and truest impressions come to 
one in the early morning hours, before the activities 
of the day and their attendant distractions have 
exerted an influence. This is one reason why many 
people can do their best work in the early hours of 
the day. 

But this fact is also a most valuable one in con¬ 
nection with the moulding of every-day life. The 
mind is at this time as a clean sheet of paper. 
We can most valuably use this quiet, receptive, im¬ 
pressionable period by wisely directing the activities 
of the mind along the highest and most desirable 
paths, and thus, so to speak, set the pace for the 
day. 

Each morning is a fresh beginning. We are, as 
it were, just beginning life. We have it entirely 
in our own hands. And when the morning with its 
fresh beginning comes, all yesterdays should be 


4 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


yesterdays, with which we have nothing to do. 
Sufficient is it to know that the way we lived our 
yesterday has determined for us our today. And, 
again, when the morning with its fresh beginning 
comes, all tomorrows should be tomorrows, with 
which we have nothing to do. Sufficient to know 
that the way we live our today determines our to¬ 
morrow. 

‘ ‘ Every day is a fresh beginning, 

Every morn is the world made new; 

You who are weary of sorrow and sinning, 

Here is a beautiful hope for you, 

A hope for me and a hope for you. 

“All the past things are past and over, 

The tasks are done, and the tears are shed. 

Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover; 

Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled, 

Are healed with the healing which night has shed. 
******* 

“Let them go, since we cannot relieve them, 

Cannot undo and cannot atone. 

God in His mercy receive, forgive them! 

Only the new days are our own. 

Today is ours, and today alone. 

“Here are the skies all burnished brightly; 

Here is the spent earth all reborn; 

Here are the tired limbs springing lightly 
To face the sun and to share with the mom 
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn. 

“Every day is a fresh beginning, 

Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, 

And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning, 

And puzzles forecasted, and possible pain, 

Take heart with the day and begin again.” 


The Fresh Beginning 


5 


Simply the first hour of this new day, with all 
its richness and glory, with all its sublime and 
eternity-determining possibilities, and each succeed¬ 
ing hour as it comes, but not before it comes. This 
is the secret of character building. This simple 
method will bring any one to the realization of the 
highest life that can be even conceived of, and 
there is nothing in this connection that can be con¬ 
ceived of that cannot be realized somehow, some- 
when, somewhere. 

This brings such a life within the possibilities 
of all, for there is no one, if really in earnest and 
if he really desires it, who cannot live to his highest 
for a single hour. But even though there should 
be, if he is only earnest in his endeavor , then, 
through the law that like builds like, he will be 
able to come a little nearer to it the next hour, and 
still nearer the next, and the next, until sooner or 
later comes the time when it becomes the natural, 
and any other would require the effort. 

In this way one becomes in love and in league 
with the highest and best in the universe, and as a 
consequence, the highest and best in the universe 
becomes in love and in league with him. They aid 
him at every turn; they seem literally to move all 
things his way, because, forsooth, he has first moved 
their way. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


II. 


THE SUPREME FACT OF HUMAN LIFE. 

The great central fact in human life is the coming 
into a conscious, vital realization of our oneness 
with the Infinite Life, and the opening of ourselves 
fully to this divine inflow. I and the Father are 
one, said the Master. In this we see how he recog¬ 
nized his oneness with the Father’s life. Again he 
said, The words that I speak unto you I speak not 
of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, He 
doeth the works. In this we see how clearly he 
recognized the fact that he of himself could do 
nothing, only as he worked in conjunction with the 
Father. Again, My Father works and I work. In 
other words, my Father sends the power, I open 
myself to it, and work in conjunction with it. 

Again he said, Seek ye first the kingdom of God 
and His righteousness, and all these things shall be 
added unto you. And he left us not in the dark 
as to exactly what he meant by this, for again he 
said, Say not Lo here nor lo there; know ye not 
that the kingdom of heaven is within you? Ac¬ 
cording to his teaching the kingdom of God and the 
kingdom of heaven were one and the same. If, 
then, his teaching is that the kingdom of heaven is 
within us, do we not clearly see that, putting it in 


The Supreme Fact of Human Life 7 

other words, his injunction is nothing more nor 
less than, Come ye into a conscious realization of 
your oneness with the Father’s life. As you realize 
this oneness you find the kingdom, and when you 
find this, all things else shall follow. 

Again, the Master said, Call no man your Father 
upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in 
heaven. Here he recognized the fact that the real 
life is direct from the life of God. Our fathers 
and our mothers are the agents that give us the 
bodies, the houses in which we live, but the real 
life comes from the Infinite Source of Life, God, 
who is our Father. 

One day word was brought to the Master that 
his mother and his brethren were without, wishing 
to speak with him. Who is my mother and who 
are my brethren? said he. Whosoever shall do the 
will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is 
my brother, and my sister, and mother. 

Many people are greatly enslaved by what we 
term ties of relationship. It is well, however, for 
us to remember that our true relatives are not 
necessarily those who are connected with us by ties 
of blood. Our truest relatives are those who are 
nearest akin to us in mind, in soul, in spirit. Our 
nearest relatives may be those living on the opposite 
side of the globe,—people whom we may never have 
seen as yet, but to whom we will yet be drawn, 
either in this form of life or in another, through 


8 This Mystical Life of Ours 

that ever working and never failing law of attrac¬ 
tion. 

When the Master gave the injunction, Call no 
man your father upon the earth: for one is your 
Father, which is in heaven, he here gave us the 
basis for that grand conception of the fatherhood 
of God. And if God is equally the Father of all, 
then we have here the basis for the brotherhood of 
man. But there is, in a sense, a conception still 
higher than this, namely, the oneness of man and 
God, and hence the oneness of the whole human 
race. When we realize this fact, then we clearly see 
how in the degree that we come into the realization 
of our oneness with the Infinite Life, and so, every 
step that we make Godward, we aid in lifting all 
mankind up to this realization, and enable them, in 
turn, to make a step Godward. 

The Master again pointed out our true relations 
with the Infinite Life when he said, Except ye be¬ 
come as little children ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. When he said, Man shall not 
live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God, he gave utterance 
to a truth of far greater import than we have as 
yet commenced fully to grasp. Here he taught that 
even the physical life can not be maintained by ma¬ 
terial food alone, but that one’s connection with this 
Infinite Source determines to a very great extent 
the condition of even the bodily structure and activ¬ 
ities. 


The Supreme Fact of Human Life g 

Said the great Hindu sage, Manu, He who in his 
own soul perceives the Supreme Soul in all beings, 
and acquires equanimity toward them all, attains 
the highest bliss. It was Athanasius who said, 
Even we may become Gods walking about in the 
flesh. The same great truth we are considering is 
the one that runs through the life and the teach¬ 
ings of Guatama, who became the Buddha. People 
are in bondage, said he, because they have not 
yet removed the idea of /. To do away with all 
sense of separateness, and to recognize the oneness 
of the self with the Infinite, is the spirit that 
breathes through all his teachings. 

All the prophets, seers, sages, and saviours in the 
world’s history became what they became, and con¬ 
sequently had the powers they had, through an en¬ 
tirely natural process. They all recognized and 
came into the conscious realization of their oneness 
with the Infinite Life. God is no respecter of per¬ 
sons. He doesn’t create prophets, seers, sages, and 
saviours as such. He creates men. But here and 
there one recognizes his true identity, recognizes 
the oneness of his life with the Source whence it 
came. He lives in the realization of this oneness, 
and in turn becomes a prophet, seer, sage, or 
saviour. 

In Tune with the Infinite , 


III. 


THE CREATIVE POWER OF THOUGHT. 

Of the vital power of thought and the interior 
forces in moulding conditions, and more, of the 
supremacy of thought over all conditions, the world 
has scarcely the faintest grasp, not to say even idea, 
as yet. The fact that thoughts are forces, and that 
through them we have creative power, is one of the 
most vital facts of the universe, the most vital fact 
of man’s being. And through this instrumentality 
we have in our grasp and as our rightful heritage, 
the power of making life and all its manifold con¬ 
ditions exactly what we will. 

Through our thought-forces we have creative 
power, not in a figurative sense, but in reality. 
Everything in the material universe about us had 
its origin first in spirit, in thought, and from this 
it took its form. The very world in which we live, 
with all its manifold wonders and sublime manifes¬ 
tations, is the result of the energies of the divine 
intelligence or mind,—God, or whatever term it 
comes convenient for each one to use. And God 
said, Let there be, and there was,—the material 
world, at least the material manifestation of it, 
literally spoken into existence, the spoken word, 


The Creative Power of Thought ' n 

however, but the outward manifestation of the in¬ 
terior forces of the Supreme Intelligence. 

Every castle the world has ever seen was first 
an ideal in the architect’s mind. Every statue was 
first an ideal in the sculptor’s mind. Every piece 
of mechanism the world has ever known was first- 
formed in the mind of the inventor. Here it was 
given birth to. These same mind-forces then dic¬ 
tated to and sent the energy into the hand that drew 
the model, and then again dictated to and sent the 
energy into the hands whereby the first instrument 
was clothed in the material form of metal or of 
wood. The lower negative always gives way to the 
higher when made positive. Mind is positive: mat¬ 
ter is negative. 

Each individual life is a part of, and hence is 
one with, the Infinite Life; and the highest intel¬ 
ligence and power belongs to each in just the de¬ 
gree that he recognizes his oneness and lays claim 
to and uses it. The power of the word is not mere¬ 
ly an idle phrase or form of expression. It is a 
real mental, spiritual, scientific fact, and can be¬ 
come vital and powerful in your hands and in mine 
in just the degree that we understand the omnip¬ 
otence of the thought forces and raise all to the 
higher planes. 

The blind, the lame, the diseased, stood before 
the Christ, who said, Receive thy sight, rise up and 
walk, or, be thou healed; and lo! it was so. The 
spoken word, however, was but the outward ex- 


12 This Mystical Life of Ours 

pression and manifestation of his interior thought- 
forces, the power and potency of which he so thor¬ 
oughly knew. But the laws governing them are 
the same to-day as they were then, and it lies in our 
power to use them the same as it lay in his. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


IV. 


THE DRAWING POWER OF MIND. 

Each individual life, after it has reached a cer¬ 
tain age or degree of intelligence, lives in the midst 
of the surroundings or environments of its own crea¬ 
tion ; and this by reason of that wonderful power, 
the drawing power of mind, which is continually 
operating in every life, whether it is conscious of it 
or not. 

We are all living, so to speak, in a vast ocean of 
thought. The very atmosphere about us is charged 
with the thought-forces that are being continually 
sent out. When the thought-forces leave the brain, 
they go out upon the atmosphere, the subtle con¬ 
ducting ether, much the same as sound-waves go 
out. It is by virtue of this law that thought trans¬ 
ference is possible, and has become an established 
scientific fact, by virtue of which a person can so 
direct his thought-forces that a person at a distance, 
and in a receptive attitude, can get the thought 
much the same as sound, for example, is conducted 
through the agency of a connecting medium. 

Even though the thoughts as they leave a par¬ 
ticular person, are not consciously directed, they go 
out; and all may be influenced by them in a greater 
or less degree, each one in proportion as he or she 


14 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


is more or less sensitively organized, or in propor¬ 
tion as he or she is negative, and so open to forces 
and influences from without. The law operating 
here is one with that great law of the universe,— 
that like attracts like, so that one continually at¬ 
tracts to himself forces and influences most akin to 
those of his own life. And his own life is deter¬ 
mined by the thoughts and emotions he habitually 
entertains, for each is building his world from 
within. As within, so without; cause, effect. 

A stalk of wheat and a stalk of corn are growing 
side by side, within an inch of each other. The 
soil is the same for both; but the wheat converts 
the food it takes from the soil into wheat, the like¬ 
ness of itself, while the corn converts the food it 
takes from the same soil into corn, the likeness of 
itself. What that which each has taken from the 
soil is converted into is determined by the soul, the 
interior life, the interior forces of each. This same 
grain taken as food by two persons will be con¬ 
verted into the body of a criminal in the one case, 
and into the body of a saint in the other, each after 
its kind; and its kind is determined by the inner 
life of each. And what again determines the inner 
life of each? The thoughts and emotions that are 
habitually entertained and that inevitably, sooner 
or later, manifest themselves in outer material form. 
Thought is the great builder in human life: it is the 
determining factor. Continually think thoughts 
that are good, and your life will show forth in 


The Drawing Power of Mind 15 

goodness, and your body in health and beauty. 
Continually think evil thoughts, and your life will 
show forth in evil, and your body in weakness and 
repulsiveness. Think thoughts of love, and you 
will love and will be loved. Think thoughts of 
hatred, and you will hate and will be hated. Each 
follows its kind. 

What All the Worlds A-Seeking. 




V. 


CREATING ONE’S OWN ATMOSPHERE. 

It is by virtue of this law that each person 
creates his own “ atmosphere ”; and this atmos-^ 
phere is determined by the character of the 
thoughts he habitually entertains. It is, in fact, 
simply his thought atmosphere—the atmosphere 
which other people detect and are influenced by. 

In this way each person creates the atmosphere 
of his own room; a family, the atmosphere of the 
house in which they live, so that the moment you 
enter the door you feel influences kindred to the 
thoughts and hence to the lives of those who dwell 
there. You get a feeling of peace and harmony or 
a feeling of disquietude and inharmony. You get 
a welcome, want-to-stay feeling or a cold, want- 
to-get-away feeling, according to their thought at¬ 
titude toward you, even though but few words be 
spoken. So the characteristic mental states of a 
congregation of people who assemble there deter¬ 
mine the atmosphere of any given assembly-place, 
church, or cathedral. Its inhabitants so make, so 
determine the atmosphere of a particular village or 
city. The sympathetic thoughts sent out by a vast 
amphitheatre of people, as they cheer a contestant, 
carry him to goals he never could reach by his own 


Creating One's Own Atmosphere 17 

efforts alone. The same is true in regard to an 
orator and his audience. 

Napoleon’s army is in the East. The plague is 
beginning to make inroads into its ranks. Long 
lines of men are lying on cots and on the ground 
in an open space adjoining the army. Fear has 
taken a vital hold of all, and the men are continu¬ 
ally being stricken. Look yonder: contrary to the 
earnest entreaties of his officers, who tell him that 
such exposure will mean sure death, Napoleon with 
a calm and dauntless look upon his face, with a firm 
and defiant step, is coming through these plague- 
stricken ranks. He is going up to, talking with, 
touching the men; and, as they see him, there goes 
up a mighty shout,—The Emperor! the Emperor! 
and from that hour the plague in its inroads is 
stopped. A marvellous example of the power of a 
man who, by his own dauntless courage, absolute 
fearlessness, and power of mind, could send out 
such forces that they in turn awakened kindred 
forces in the minds of thousands of others, which 
in turn dominate their very bodies, so that the 
plague, and even death itself, is driven from the 
field. One of the grandest examples of a man of 
the most mighty and tremendous mind and will 
power, and at the same time an example of one of 
the grandest failures, taking life in its totality, the 
world has ever seen. 

We are all much more influenced by the thought- 


18 This Mystical Life of Ours 

forces and mental states of those around us and 
of the world at large than we have even the slight¬ 
est conception of. If not self-hypnotized into cer¬ 
tain beliefs and practices, we are, so to speak, semi- 
hypnotized through the influence of the thoughts 
of others, even though unconsciously both on their 
part and on ours. We are so influenced and en¬ 
slaved in just the degree that we fail to recognize 
the power and omnipotence of our own forces, and 
so become slaves to custom, conventionality, the 
opinions of others, and so in like proportion lose our 
own individuality and powers. 

Each is building his world from within, and, if 
outside forces play, it is because he allows them to 
play; and he has it in his own power to determine 
whether these shall be positive, uplifting, ennobling, 
strengthening, success-giving, or negative, degrad¬ 
ing, weakening, failure-bringing. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


VI. 


THE LAW OF ATTRACTION WORKS 
UNCEASINGLY. 

If one hold himself in the thought of poverty, he 
will be poor, and the chances are that he will re¬ 
main in poverty. If he hold himself, whatever pres¬ 
ent conditions may be, continually in the thought 
of prosperity, he sets into operation forces that will 
sooner or later bring him into prosperous condi¬ 
tions. The law of attraction works unceasingly 
throughout the universe, and the one great and 
never changing fact in connection with it is, as we 
have found, that like attracts like. If we are one 
with this Infinite Power, this source of all things, 
then in the degree that we live in the realization of 
this oneness, in that degree do we actualize in our¬ 
selves a power that will bring to us an abundance 
of all things that it is desirable for us to have. In 
this way we come into possession of a power where¬ 
by we can actualize at all times those conditions 
that we desire. 

As all truth exists now, and awaits simply our 
perception of it, so all things necessary for present 
needs exist now, and await simply the power in us 
to appropriate them. God holds all things in His 


20 This Mystical Life of Ours 

hands. His constant word is, My child, acknowl¬ 
edge me in all your ways, and in the degree that 
you do this, in the degree that you live this, then 
what is mine is yours. Jehovah-jireh,—the Lord 
will provide. “ He giveth to all men liberally and 
upbraideth not. ,, He giveth liberally to all men 
who put themselves in the right attitude to receive 
from Him. He forces no good things upon any 
one. 

The old and somewhat prevalent idea of godliness 
and poverty has absolutely no basis for its existence, 
and the sooner we get away from it the better. It 
had its birth in the same way that the idea of 
asceticism came into existence, when the idea pre¬ 
vailed that there was necessarily a warfare between 
the flesh and the spirit. It had its origin therefore 
in the minds of those who had a distorted a one¬ 
sided view of life. True godliness is in a sense the 
same as true wisdom. The one who is truly wise, 
and who uses the forces and powers with which he 
is endowed, to him the great universe always opens 
her treasure house. 

Are you out of a situation? Let the fear that 
you will not get another take hold of and dominate 
yoti, and the chances are that it may be a long time 
before you will get another, or the one that you do 
get may be a very poor one indeed. Whatever the 
circumstances, you must realize that you have with¬ 
in you forces and powers that you can set into 


The Law of Attraction Works Unceasingly 21 

operation that will triumph over any and all ap¬ 
parent or temporary losses. Set these forces into 
operation and you will then be placing a magnet 
that will draw to you a situation that may be far 
better than the one you have lost, and the time may 
soon come when you will be even thankful that you 
lost the old one. 

Recognize, working in and through you, the same 
Infinite Power that creates and governs all things 
in the universe, the same Infinite Power that gov¬ 
erns the endless systems of worlds in space. Send 
out your thought,—thought is a force, and it has 
occult power of unknown proportions when rightly 
used and wisely directed,—send out your thought 
that the right situation or the right work will come 
to you at the right time, in the right way, and that 
you will recognize it when it comes. Hold to this 
thought, never allow it to weaken, hold to it, and 
continually water it with firm expectation. You in 
this way put your advertisement into a psychical, a 
spiritual newspaper, a paper that has not a limited 
circulation, but one that will make its way not only 
to the utmost bounds of the earth, but of the very 
universe itself. It is an advertisement, moreover, 
which if rightly placed on your part, will be far 
more effective than any advertisement you could 
possibly put into any printed sheet, no matter what 
claims are made in regard to its being “ the great 
advertising medium.” In the degree that you come 
into this realization and live in harmony with the 


22 This Mystical Life of Ours 

higher laws and forces, in that degree will you be 
able to do this effectively. 

If you wish to look through the “ want ” columns 
of the newspapers, then do it, but not in the ordinary 
way. Put the higher forces into operation and thus 
place it on a higher basis. 

If you get the situation and it does not prove to 
be exactly what you want, if you feel that you are 
capable of filling a better one, then the moment you 
enter upon it take the attitude of mind that this 
situation is the stepping-stone that will lead you to 
one that will be still better. Hold this thought 
steadily, affirm it, believe it, expect it, and all the 
time be faithful, absolutely faithful to the situation 
in which you are at present placed. If you are not 
faithful to it then the chances are that it will not 
be the stepping-stone to something better, but to 
something poorer. If you are faithful to it, the 
time may soon come when you will be glad and 
thankful, when you will rejoice, that you lost your 
old position. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


VII. 


THE LAW OF PROSPERITY. 

This is the law of prosperity: When apparent ad¬ 
versity comes, be not cast down by it, but make the 
best of it, and always look forward for better 
things, for conditions more prosperous. To hold 
yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into opera¬ 
tion subtle, silent, and irresistible forces that sooner 
or later will actualize in material form that which 
is today merely an idea. But ideas have occult 
power, and ideas, when rightly planted and rightly 
tended, are the seeds that actualize material condi¬ 
tions. 

Never give a moment to complaint, but utilize 
the time that would otherwise be spent in this way 
in looking forward arid actualizing the conditions 
you desire. Suggest prosperity to yourself. See 
yourself in a prosperous condition. Affirm that you 
will before long be in a prosperous condition. Af¬ 
firm it calmly and quietly, but strongly and con¬ 
fidently. Believe it, believe it absolutely. Expect 
it,—keep it continually watered with expectation. 
You thus make yourself a magnet to attract the 
things that you desire. Don’t be afraid to suggest, 
to affirm these things, for by so doing you put forth 
an ideal which will begin to clothe itself in material 


24 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


form. In this way you are utilizing agents among 
the most subtle and powerful in the universe. If 
you are particularly desirous for anything that you 
feel it is good and right for you to have, something 
that will broaden your life or that will increase 
your usefulness to others, simply hold the thought 
that at the right time, in the right way, and through 
the right instrumentality, there will come to you or 
there will open up for you the way whereby you can 
attain what you desire. 

. 

Don’t fold your hands and expect to see things 
drop into your lap, but set into operation the higher 
forces and then take hold of the first thing that 
offers itself. Do what your hands find to do, and 
do it well. If this work is not thoroughly satisfac¬ 
tory to you, then affirm, believe, and expect that it 
is the agency that will lead you to something bet¬ 
ter. “ The basis for attracting the best of all the 
world can give to you is to first surround, own, and 
live in these things in mind, or what is falsely called 
imagination. All so-called imaginings are realities 
and forces of unseen element. Live in mind in a 
palace and gradually palatial surroundings will 
gravitate to you. But so living is not pining, or 
longing, or complainingly wishing. It is when you 
are ‘ down in the world,’ calmly and persistently 
seeing yourself as up. It is when you are now com¬ 
pelled to eat from a tin plate, regarding that tin 
plate as only the certain step to one of silver. It is 


The Law of Prosperity 


25 


not envying and growling at other people who have 
silver plate. That growling is just so much capital 
stock taken from the bank account of mental force.” 

A friend who knows the power of the interior 
forces, and whose life is guided in every detail by 
them, has given a suggestion in this form: When 
you are in the arms of the bear, even though he 
is hugging you, look him in the face and laugh, but 
all the time keep your eye on the bull. If you allow 
all of your attention to be given to the work of the 
bear, the bull may get entirely out of your sight. 
In other words, if you yield to adversity the chances 
are that it will master you, but if you recognize 
in yourself the power of mastery over conditions 
then adversity will yield to you, and will be changed 
into prosperity. If when it comes you calmly and 
quietly recognize it, and use the time that might 
otherwise be spent in regrets, and fears, and fore¬ 
bodings, in setting into operation the powerful 
forces within you, it will soon take its leave. 

Faith, absolute dogmatic faith, is the only law of 
true success. When we recognize the fact that a 
man carries his success or his failure with him, and 
that it does not depend upon outside conditions, we 
will come into the possession of powers that will 
quickly change outside conditions into agencies 
that make for success. When we come into this 
higher realization and bring our lives into com¬ 
plete harmony with the higher laws, we will then 
be able so to focus and direct the awakened interior 


26 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


forces, that they will go out and return laden with 
that for which they are sent. We will then be 
great enough to attract success, and it will not al¬ 
ways be apparently just a little ways ahead. We 
can then establish in ourselves a centre so strong 
that instead of running hither and thither for this 
or that, we can stay at home and draw to us the 
conditions we desire. If we firmly establish and 
hold to this centre, things will seem continually to 
come our way. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


VIII. 


THE LAW OF HABIT-FORMING. 

Have we it within our power to determine at 
all times what types of habits shall take form in 
our lives? In other words, is habit-forming, char¬ 
acter-building, a matter of mere chance, or have 
we it within our own control? We have, entirely 
and absolutely. 

For there is a simple, natural, and thoroughly 
scientific method that all should know. A method 
whereby old, undesirable, earth-binding habits can 
be broken, and new, desirable, heaven-lifting hab¬ 
its can be acquired,—a method whereby life in part 
or in its totality can be changed, provided one is 
sufficiently in earnest to know, and, knowing it, to 
apply the law. 

Thought is the force underlying all. And what 
do we mean by this? Simply this: Your every 
act—every conscious act—is preceded by a thought. 
Your dominating thoughts determine your domi¬ 
nating actions. The acts repeated crystallize them¬ 
selves into the habit. The aggregate of your hab¬ 
its is your character. Whatever, then, you would 
have your acts, you must look well to the char¬ 
acter of the thought you entertain. Whatever act 




28 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


you would not do,—habit you would not acquire,— 
you must look well to it that you do not entertain 
the type of thought that will give birth to this act, 
this habit. 

It is a simple psychological law that any type 
of thought, if entertained for a sufficient length of 
time, will, by and by, reach the motor tracks of the 
brain, and finally burst forth into action. Murder 
can be and many times is committed in this way, 
the same as all undesirable things are done. On 
the other hand, the greatest powers are grown, the 
most God-like characteristics are engendered, the 
most heroic acts are performed in the same way. 

The thing clearly to understand is this: That the 
thought is always parent to the act. Now, we 
have it entirely in our own hands to determine ex¬ 
actly what thoughts we entertain. In the realm of 
our own minds we have absolute control, or we 
should have, and if at any time we have not, then 
there is a method by which we can gain control, 
and in the realm of the mind become thorough 
masters. 

Here let us refer to that law of the mind which 
is the same as is the law in connection with the re¬ 
flex nerve system of the body, the law which says 
that whenever one does a certain thing in a certain 
way it is easier to do the same thing in the same 
way the next time, and still easier the next, and the 
next, and the next, until in time it comes to pass 


The Law of Habit-Forming 29 

that no effort is required, or no effort worth speak¬ 
ing of; but on the contrary, to do the opposite 
would require the effort. The mind carries with it 
the power that perpetuates its own type of thought, 
the same as the body carries with it through the 
reflex nerve system the power which perpetuates 
and makes continually easier its own particular 
acts. Thus a simple effort to control one’s thoughts, 
a simple setting about it, even if at first failure is 
the result, and even if for a time failure seems to be 
about the only result, will in time, sooner or later, 
bring him to the point of easy, full, and complete 
control. 

Each one, then, can grow the power of deter¬ 
mining, controlling his thought, the power of de¬ 
termining what types of thought he shall and what 
types he shall not entertain. For let us never part 
in mind with this fact, that every earnest effort 
along any line makes the end aimed at just a little 
easier for each succeeding effort, even if, as has 
been said, apparent failure is the result of the earlier 
efforts. This is a case where even failure is suc¬ 
cess, for the failure is not in the effort, and every 
earnest effort adds an increment of power that will 
eventually accomplish the end aimed at. 

Character-Building Thought Power. 


IX. 


ACTUALIZING ONE’S IDEALS. 

There is nothing more true in connection with 
human life than that we grow into the likeness of 
those things we contemplate. Literally and scien¬ 
tifically and necessarily true is it that, “as a man 
thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The “ is ” part is 
his character. His character is the sum total of 
his habits. His habits have been formed by his con¬ 
scious acts; but every conscious act is, as we have 
found, preceded by a thought. And so we have it 
—thought on the one hand, character, life, destiny 
on the other. And simple it becomes when we bear 
in mind that it is simply the thought of the present 
moment, and the next moment when it is upon us, 
and then the next, and so on through all time. 

One can in this way attain to whatever ideals he 
would attain to. Two steps are necessary: first, as 
the days pass, to form one’s ideals; and second, to 
follow them continually whatever may arise, wher¬ 
ever they may lead him. Always remember that 
the great and strong character is the one who is 
ever ready to sacrifice the present pleasure for the 
future good. He who will thus follow his highest 
ideals as they present themselves to him day after 
day, year after year, will find that as Dante, follow- 


Actualizing One's Ideals 


31 


ing his beloved from world to world, finally found 
her at the gates of Paradise, so he will find himself 
eventually at the same gates. Life is not, we may 
say, for mere passing pleasure, but for the highest 
unfoldment that one can attain to, the noblest char¬ 
acter that one can grow, and for the greatest service 
that one can render to all mankind. In this, how¬ 
ever, we will find the highest pleasure, for in this 
the only real pleasure lies. 

The question is not, What are the conditions in 
our lives ? but, How do we meet the conditions that 
we find there? And whatever the conditions are, 
it is unwise and profitless to look upon them, even 
if they are conditions that we would have other¬ 
wise, in the attitude of complaint, for complaint will 
bring depression, and depression will weaken and 
possibly even kill the spirit that would engender the 
power that would enable us to bring into our lives 
an entirely new set of conditions. 

Each one is so apt to think that his own con¬ 
ditions, his own trials or troubles or sorrows, or his 
own struggles, as the case may be, are greater than 
those of the great mass of mankind, or possibly 
greater than those of any one else in the world. 
He forgets that each one has his own peculiar trials 
or troubles or sorrows to bear, or struggles in hab¬ 
its to overcome, and that his is but the common lot 
of all the human race. We are apt to make the 


32 This Mystical Life of Ours 

mistake in this—in that we see and feel keenly our 
own trials, or adverse conditions, or characteristics 
to be overcome, while those of others we do not see 
so clearly, and hence we are apt to think that they 
are not at all equal to our own. Each has his own 
problems to work out. Each must work out his 
own problems. Each must grow the insight that 
will enable him to see what the causes are that have 
brought the unfavorable conditions into his life; 
each must grow the strength that will enable him 
to face these conditions, and to set into operation 
forces that will bring about a different set of condi¬ 
tions. We may be of aid to one another by way of 
suggestion, by way of bringing to one another a 
knowledge of certain higher laws and forces,—laws 
and forces that will make it easier to do that which 
we would do. The doing, however, must be done 
by each one for himself. 

Character-Building Thought Power. 


X. 


FAITH AND PRAYER—THEIR NATURE. 

What, shall we ask, is the place, what the value, 
of prayer ? Prayer, as every act of devotion, brings 
us into an ever greater conscious harmony with the 
Infinite, the one pearl of great price; for it is this 
harmony which brings all other things. Prayer is 
the soul’s sincere desire, and thus is its own answer, 
as the sincere desire made active and accompanied 
by faith sooner or later gives place to realization; 
for faith is an invisible and invincible magnet , and 
attracts to itself whatever it fervently desires and 
calmly and persistently expects. This is absolute, 
and the results will be absolute in exact proportion 
as this operation of the thought forces, as this faith 
is absolute, and relative in exact proportion as it is 
relative. The Master said, What things soever ye 
desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them 
and ye shall have them. Can any law be more 
clearly enunciated, can anything be more definite 
and more absolute than this? According to thy 
faith be it unto thee. Do we at times fail in obtain¬ 
ing the results we desire? The fault, the failure, 
lies not in the law but in ourselves. Regarded in its 
right and true light, than prayer there is nothing 


34 This Mystical Life of Ours 

more scientific, nothing more valuable, nothing more 
effective. 

This conscious realization of oneness with the 
Infinite Life is of all things the one thing to be de¬ 
sired ; for, when this oneness is realized and lived in, 
all other things follow in its train, there are no de¬ 
sires that shall not be realized, for God has planted 
in the human breast no desire without its correspond¬ 
ing means of realization. No harm can come nigh, 
nothing can touch us, there will be nothing to fear; 
for we shall thus attract only the good. And what¬ 
ever changes time may bring, understanding the law, 
we shall always expect something better, and thus, 
set into operation the forces that will attract that 
something, realizing that many times angels go out 
that archangels may enter in; and this is always 
true in the case of the life of this higher realization. 
And why should we have any fear whatever,—fear 
even for the nation, as is many times expressed? 
God is behind His world, in love and with infinite 
care and watchfulness working out His great and 
almighty plans; and whatever plans men may devise, 
He will when the time is ripe either frustrate and 
shatter, or aid and push through to their most per¬ 
fect culmination,—frustrate and shatter if contrary 
to, aid and actualize if in harmony with His. 

These facts, the facts relating to the powers that 
come with the higher awakening, have been dealt 
with somewhat fully, to show that the matters along 


Faith and Prayer—Their Nature 35 

the lines of man’s interior, intuitive, spiritual, 
thought, soul life, instead of being, as they are so 
many times regarded, merely indefinite, sentimental, 
or impractical, are, on the contrary, powerfully, 
omnipotently real, and are of all practical things in 
the world the most practical, and, in the truest and 
deepest sense, the only truly practical things there 
are. And pre-eminently is this true when we look 
with a long range of vision, past the mere to-day, 
to the final outcome, to the time when that transi¬ 
tion we are accustomed to call death takes place, 
and all accumulations and possessions material are 
left behind, and the soul takes with it only the un- 
foldment and growth of the real life; and unless it 
has this, when all else must be left behind, it goes 
out poor indeed. And a most wonderful and beau¬ 
tiful fact of it all is this: that all growth, all ad¬ 
vancement, all attainment made along the lines of 
the spiritual, the soul, the real life, is so much made 
forever, and can never be lost. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


XI. 


THE PETTY PERSONAL AND THE 
LARGER UNIVERSAL. 

When the step from the personal to the imper¬ 
sonal, from the personal, the individual, to the uni¬ 
versal, is once made, the great solution of life has 
come; and by this same step one enters at once into 
the realm of all power. When this is done, and one 
fully realizes the fact that the greatest life is the life 
spent in the service of all mankind, and then when 
he vitally grasps that great eternal principle of right, 
of truth, of justice, that runs through all the uni¬ 
verse, and which, though temporarily it may seem 
to be perverted, always and with never an excep¬ 
tion eventually prevails, and that with an omnip¬ 
otent power,—he then holds the key to all situations. 

A king of this nature goes about his work ab¬ 
solutely regardless of what men may say or hear or 
think or do; for he himself has absolutely nothing 
to gain or nothing to lose, and nothing of this na¬ 
ture can come near him or touch him, for he is 
standing not in the personal, but in the universal. 
He is then in God’s work, and the very God-powers 
are his, and it seems as if the very angels of heaven 
come to minister unto him and to move things his 
way; and this is true, very true, for he himself is 


The Petty Personal and the Larger Universal 37 

simply moving God’s way, and when this is so, the 
certainty of the outcome is absolute. 

How often did the Master say, “ I seek not to do 
mine own will, but the will of the Father who sent 
me ”! Here is the world’s great example of the 
life out of the personal and in the universal, hence 
his great power. The same has been true of all the 
saviors, the prophets, the seers, the sages, and the 
leaders in the world’s history, of all of truly great 
and lasting power. 

He who would then come into the secret of power 
must come from the personal into the universal, and 
with this comes not only great power, but also free¬ 
dom from the vexations and perplexities that rise 
from the misconstruing of motives, the opinions of 
others; for such a one cares nothing as to what men 
may say, or hear, or think, or do, so long as he is 
true to the great principles of right and truth before 
him. And, if we will search carefully, we shall 
find that practically all the perplexities and difficul¬ 
ties of life have their origin on the side of the per¬ 
sonal. 

Much is said to young men to-day about success 
in life,—success generally though, as the world 
calls success. It is well, however, always to bear 
in mind the fact that there is a success which is a 
miserable, a deplorable failure; while, on the other 
hand, there is a failure which is a grand, a noble, 
a God-like success. And one crying need of the 
age is that young men be taught the true dignity, 


38 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


nobility, and power of such a failure,—such a fail¬ 
ure in the eyes of the world to-day, but such a suc¬ 
cess in the eyes of God and the coming ages. When 
this is done, there will be among us more prophets, 
more saviors, more men of grand and noble stature, 
who with a firm and steady hand will hold the 
lighted torch of true advancement high up among 
the people; and they will be those whom the people 
will gladly follow, for they will be those who will 
speak and move with authority, true sons of God, 
true brothers of men. A man may make his 
millions and his life be a failure still. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


XII. 


THE POEM HANGS ON THE BERRY- 
BUSH. 

To live undisturbed by passing occurrences you 
must first find your own centre. You must then be 
firm in your own centre, and so rule the world 
from within. He who does not himself condition 
circumstances allows the process to be reversed, 
and becomes a conditioned circumstance. Find 
your centre and live in it. Surrender it to no per¬ 
son, to no thing. In the degree that you do this 
will you find yourself growing stronger and stronger 
in it. And how can one find his centre? By 
realizing his oneness with the Infinite Power, and 
by living continually in this realization. 

But if you do not rule from your own centre, 
if you invest this or that with the power of bring¬ 
ing you annoyance, or evil, or harm, then take what 
it brings, but cease your railings against the eternal 
goodness and beneficence of all things. 

‘ * I swear the earth shall surely be complete 
To him or her who shall be complete; 

The earth remains jagged and broken 
Only to him who remains jagged and broken.” 

If the windows of your soul are dirty and 
streaked, covered with matter foreign to them, 


40 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


then the world as you look out of them will be to 
you dirty and streaked and out of order. Cease 
your complainings, however; keep your pessimism, 
your “ poor, unfortunate me ” to yourself, lest you 
betray the fact that your windows are badly in need 
of something. But know that your friend, who 
keeps his windows clean, that the Eternal Sun may 
illumine all within and make visible all without,— 
know that he lives in a different world from yours. 

Then, go wash your windows, and instead of 
longing for some other world, you will discover the 
wonderful beauties of this world; and if you don’t 
find transcendent beauties on every hand here, the 
chances are that you will never find them any¬ 
where. 

“The poem hangs on the berry-bush 
When comes the poet’s eye, 

And the whole street is a masquerade 
When Shakspeare passes by.” 

This same Shakspeare, whose mere passing 
causes all this commotion, is the one who put into 
the mouth of one of his creations the words: “ The 
fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our¬ 
selves, that we are underlings.” And the great 
work of his own life is right good evidence that 
he realized full well the truth of the facts we are 
considering. And again he gave us a great truth 
in keeping with what we are considering when he 
said: 


The Poem Hangs on the Berry-Bush 41 

“Our doubts are traitors, 

And make us lose the good we oft might win 
By fearing to attempt.” 

There is probably no agent that brings us more 
undesirable conditions than fear. We should live 
in fear of nothing, nor will we when we come fully 
to know ourselves. An old French proverb runs: 

“Some of your griefs you have cured, 

And the sharpest you still have survived; 

But what torments of pain you endured 
From evils that never arrived.” 

Fear and lack of faith go hand in hand. The 
one is born of the other. Tell me how much one is 
given to fear, and I will tell you how much he lacks 
in faith. Fear is a most expensive guest to enter¬ 
tain, the same as worry is: so expensive are they 
that no one can afford to entertain them. We in¬ 
vite what we fear, the same as, by a different atti¬ 
tude of mind, we invite and attract the influences 
and conditions we desire. The mind dominated by 
fear opens the door for the entrance of the very 
things, for the actualization of the very conditions 
it fears. 

“ Where are you going ? ” asked an Eastern pil¬ 
grim on meeting the plague one day. “ I am going 
to Bagdad to kill five thousand people,” was the 
reply. A few days later the same pilgrim met the 
plague returning. “ You told me you were going 
to Bagdad to kill five thousand people,” said he, 


42 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


“ but instead, you killed fifty thousand.” “ No,” 
said the plague, “ I killed only five thousand, as 
I told you I would; the others died of fright .” 

Fear can paralyze every muscle in the body. 
Fear affects the flow of the blood, likewise the 
normal and healthy action of all the life forces. 
Fear can make the body rigid, motionless, and 
powerless to move. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


XIII. 


THE INFLUENCE OF OUR PREVAILING 
MENTAL STATES UPON OTHERS. 

Not only do we attract to ourselves the things 
we fear, but we also aid in attracting to others the 
conditions we in our own minds hold them in fear 
of. This we do in proportion to the strength of 
our own thought, and in the degree that they are 
sensitively organized and so influenced by our 
thought, and this, although it be unconscious both 
on their part and on ours. 

Children, and especially when very young, are, 
generally speaking, more sensitive to their sur¬ 
rounding influences than grown people are. Some 
are veritable little sensitive plates, registering the 
influences about them, and embodying them as they 
grow. How careful in their prevailing mental 
states then should be those who have them in charge, 
and especially how careful should a mother be 
during the time she is carrying the child, and when 
every thought, every mental as well as emotional 
state has its direct influence upon the life of the 
unborn child. Let parents be careful how they hold 
a child, either younger or older, in the thought of 
fear. This is many times done, unwittingly on 
their part, through anxiety, and at times through 


44 This Mystical Life of Ours 

what might well be termed over-care, which is fully 
as bad as under-care. 

I know of a number of cases where a child has 
been so continually held in the thought of fear lest 
this or that condition come upon him, that the very 
things that were feared have been drawn to him, 
which probably otherwise never would have come 
at all. Many times there has been no adequate 
basis for the fear. In case there is a basis, then 
far wiser is it to take exactly the opposite attitude, 
so as to neutralize the force at work, and then to 
hold the child in the thought of wisdom and 
strength that it may be able to meet the condition 
and master it, instead of being mastered by it. 

But a day or two ago a friend was telling me 
of an experience of his own life in this connection. 
At a period when he was having a terrific struggle 
with a certain habit, he was so continually held in 
the thought of fear by his mother and the young 
lady to whom he was engaged,—the engagement 
to be consummated at the end of a certain period, 
the time depending on his proving his mastery,— 
that he, very sensitively organized, continually felt 
the depressing and weakening effects of their nega¬ 
tive thoughts. He could always tell exactly how 
they felt toward him; he was continually influenced 
and weakened by their fear, by their questionings, 
by their suspicions, all of which had the effect of 
lessening the sense of his own power, all of which 
had an endeavor-paralyzing influence upon him. 


Prevailing Mental States upon Others 45 

And so instead of their begetting courage and 
strength in him, they brought him to a still greater 
realization of his own weakness and the almost 
worthless use of struggle. 

Here were two who loved him dearly, and who 
would have done anything and everything to help 
him gain the mastery, but who, ignorant of the 
silent, subtle, ever-working and all-telling power 
of the thought forces, instead of imparting to him 
courage, instead of adding to his strength, dis¬ 
armed him of this, and then added an additional 
weakness from without. In this way the battle for 
him was made harder in a three-fold degree. 

Fear and worry and all kindred mental states 
are too expensive for any person, man, woman, or 
child, to entertain or indulge in. Fear paralyzes 
healthy action, worry corrodes and pulls down the 
organism, and will finally tear it to pieces. Noth¬ 
ing is to be gained by it, but everything to be lost. 
Long-continued grief at any loss will do the same. 
Each brings its own peculiar type of ailment. An 
inordinate love of gain, a close-fisted, hoarding 
disposition will have kindred effects. Anger, jeal¬ 
ousy, malice, continual fault-finding, lust, has each 
its own peculiar corroding, weakening, tearing- 
down effects. 

We shall find that not only are happiness and 
prosperity concomitants of righteousness,—living 
in harmony with the higher laws, but bodily health 
as well. The great Hebrew seer enunciated a won- 




46 This Mystical Life of Ours 

derful chemistry of life when he said,—“ As right¬ 
eousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, 
pursueth it to his own death.” On the other hand, 
“ In the way of righteousness is life; and in the 
pathway thereof there is no death.” The time will 
come when it will be seen that this means far more 
than most people dare even to think as yet. “It 
rests with man to say whether his soul shall be 
housed in a stately mansion of ever-growing splen¬ 
dor and beauty, or in a hovel of his own building, 
—a hovel at last ruined and abandoned to decay.” 

The bodies of almost untold numbers, living their 
one-sided, unbalanced lives, are every year, through 
these influences, weakening and falling by the way- 
side long before their time. Poor, poor houses! 
Intended to be beautiful temples, brought to deso¬ 
lation by their ignorant, reckless, deluded tenants. 
Poor houses! 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


i 


XIV. 


SAVIORS ONE OF ANOTHER. 

And in the same sense we are all the saviors one 
of another, or may become so. A sudden emer¬ 
gency arises, and I stand faltering and weak with 
fear. My friend beside me is strong and fearless. 
He sees the emergency. He summons up all the 
latent powers within him, and springs forth to meet 
it. This sublime example arouses me, calls my 
latent powers into activity, when but for him I 
might not have known them there. I follow his 
example. I now know my powers, and know them 
forever after. Thus, in this, my friend has become 
my savior. 

I am weak in some point of character,—vacil¬ 
lating, yielding, stumbling, falling, continually eat¬ 
ing the bitter fruit of it all. My friend is strong, 
he has gained thorough self-mastery. The majesty 
and beauty of power are upon his brow. I see his 
example, I love his life, I am influenced by his 
power. My soul longs and cries out for the same. 
A supreme effort of will—that imperial master that 
will take one anywhere when rightly directed— 
arises within me, it is born at last, and it calls all 
the soul’s latent powers into activity; and instead 
of stumbling I stand firm, instead of giving over in 


48 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


weakness I stand firm and master, I enter into the 
joys of full self-mastery, and through this into the 
mastery of all things besides. And thus my friend 
has again become my savior. 

With the new power I have acquired through 
the example and influence of my savior-friend, I, 
in turn, stand before a friend who is struggling, 
who is stumbling and in despair. He sees, he feels, 
the power of my strength. He longs for, his soul 
cries out for the same. His interior forces are 
called into activity, he now knows his powers; and 
instead of the slave, he becomes the master, and 
thus I, in turn, have become his savior. Oh, the 
wonderful sense of sublimity, the mighty feelings 
of responsibility, the deep sense of power and peace 
the recognition of this fact should bring to each 
and all. 

God works through the instrumentality of human 
agency. Then forever away with that old, shrivel¬ 
ling, weakening, dying, and devilish idea that we 
are poor worms of the dust! We may or we may 
not be: it all depends upon the self. The moment 
we believe we are we become such; and as long as 
we hold to the belief we will be held to this iden¬ 
tity, and will act and live as such. The moment, 
however, we recognize our divinity, our higher, our 
God-selves, and the fact that we are the saviors of 
our fellow-men, we become saviors, and stand and 
move in the midst of a majesty and beauty and 
power that of itself proclaims us as such. 


Saviors One of Another 


49 


There is a prevalent idea to the effect that over¬ 
coming in this sense necessarily implies more or less 
of a giving up,—that it means something possibly 
on the order of asceticism. On the contrary, the 
highest, truest, keenest pleasures the human soul 
can know, it finds only after the higher is entered 
upon and has commenced its work of mastery; and, 
instead of there being a giving up of any kind, there 
is a great law which says that the lower always and 
of its own accord falls away before the higher. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


XV. 


NOT REPRESSION, BUT SELF-MASTERY. 

From what has been said let it not be inferred 
that the body, the physical, material life is to be de¬ 
spised or looked down upon. This, rather let it be 
said, is one of the crying errors of the times, and 
prolific of a vast amount of error, suffering, and 
shame. On the contrary, it should be thought all 
the more highly of: it should be loved and devel¬ 
oped to its highest perfections, beauties, and powers. 
God gave us the body not in vain. It is just as 
holy and beautiful as the spirit itself. It is merely 
the outward material manifestation of the individu¬ 
alized spirit; and we by our hourly thoughts and 
emotions are building it, are determining its condi¬ 
tions, its structure, and appearance. 

Every part, every organ, every function of the 
body is just as clean, just as beautiful, just as sweet, 
and just as holy as every other part; and it is only 
by virtue of man’s perverted ways of looking at 
some that they become otherwise, and the moment 
they so become, abuses, ill uses, suffering, and shame 
creep in. 

Not repression, but elevation. Would that this 
could be repeated a thousand times over! Not re- 


Not Repression , but Self-Mastery 51 

pression, but elevation. Every part, every organ, 
every function of the body is given for use, but not 
for misuse or abuse; and the moment the latter 
takes place in connection with any function it loses 
its higher powers of use, and there goes with this 
the higher powers of true enjoyment. 

No, a knowledge of the spiritual realities of life 
prohibits asceticism, repression, the same as it pro w 
hibits license and perverted use. To err on the one 
side is just as contrary to the ideal life as to err on 
the other. All things are for a purpose, all should 
be used and enjoyed; but all should be rightly used, 
that they may be fully enjoyed. 

It is the threefold life and development that is 
wanted,—physical, mental, spiritual. This gives the 
rounded life, and he or she who fails in any one 
comes short of the perfect whole. The physical 
has its uses just the same and is just as important 
as the others. The great secret of the highly suc¬ 
cessful life is, however, to infuse the mental and 
the physical with the spiritual; in other words, to 
spiritualize all, and so raise all to the highest possi¬ 
bilities and powers. 

It is the all-around, fully developed we want,— 
not the ethereal, pale-blooded man and woman, but 
the man and woman of flesh and blood, for action 
and service here and now,—the man and woman 
strong and powerful, with all the faculties and func¬ 
tions fully unfolded and used, all in a royal and 


52 This Mystical Life of Ours 

bounding condition, but all rightly subordinated. 
The man and the woman of this kind, with the 
imperial hand of mastery upon all,—standing, mov¬ 
ing thus like a king, nay, like a very God,—such 
is the man and such is the woman of power. Such 
is the ideal life: anything else is one-sided, and 
falls short of it. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


XVI. 


THOUGHTS ARE FORCES. 

Thought is at the bottom of all progress or retro¬ 
gression, of all success or failure, of all that is de¬ 
sirable or undesirable in human life. The type of 
thought we entertain both creates and draws con¬ 
ditions that crystallize about it, conditions exactly 
the same in nature as is the thought that gives them 
form. Thoughts are forces, and each creates of 
its kind, whether we realize it or not. The great 
law of the drawing power of the mind, which says 
that like creates like, and that like attracts like, is 
continually working in every human life, for it is 
one of the great immutable laws of the universe. 
For one to take time to see clearly the things he 
would attain to, and then to hold that ideal stead¬ 
ily and continually before his mind, never allowing 
faith—his positive thought-forces—to give way to 
or to be neutralized by doubts and fears, and then 
to set about doing each day what his hands find to 
do, never complaining, but spending the time that 
he would otherwise spend in complaint in focusing 
his thought-forces upon the ideal that his mind 
has built, will sooner or later bring about the full 
materialization of that for which he sets out. 

There are those who, when they begin to grasp 


54 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


the fact that there is what we may term a “science 
of- thought,” who, when they begin to realize that 
through the instrumentality of our interior, spir¬ 
itual thought-forces we. have the power of gradu¬ 
ally moulding the every-day conditions of life as we 
would have them, in their early enthusiasm are not 
able to see results as quickly as they expect, and 
are apt to think, therefore, that after all there is 
not very much in that which has but newly come 
to their knowledge. They must remember, how¬ 
ever, that in endeavoring to overcome an old or to 
grow a new habit, everything cannot be done all 
at once . 

In the degree that we attempt to use the thought- 
forces do we continually become able to use them 
more effectively. Progress is slow at first, more 
rapid as we proceed. Power grows by using, or, 
in other words, using brings a continually increas¬ 
ing power. This is governed by law the same as 
are all things in our lives, and all things in the uni¬ 
verse about us. Every act and advancement made 
by the musician is in full accordance with law. No 
one commencing the study of music can, for ex¬ 
ample, sit down to the piano and play the piece of 
a master at the first effort. He must not conclude, 
however, nor does he conclude, that the piece of 
the master cannot be played by him, or, for that 
matter, by any one. He begins to practise the piece. 
The law of the mind that we have already noticed 
comes to his aid, whereby his mind follows the 
music more readily, more rapidly, and more surely 


Thoughts are Forces 


55 


each succeeding time, and there also comes into 
operation and to his aid the law underlying the ac¬ 
tion of the reflex nerve system of the body, which 
we have also noticed, whereby his fingers coordi¬ 
nate their movements with the movements of his 
mind, more readily, more rapidly, and more accu¬ 
rately each succeeding time; until by and by the 
time comes when that which he stumbles through 
at first, that in which there is no harmony, nothing 
but discord, finally reveals itself as the music of the 
master, the music that thrills and moves masses of 
men and women. So it is in the use of the thought- 
forces. It is the reiteration, the constant reiteration 
of the thought that grows the power of continually 
stronger thought-focusing, and that finally brings 
manifestation. 

Character-Building Thought Pozver. 


XVII. 


ALL LIFE FROM WITHIN. 

All life is from within out. This is something 
that cannot be reiterated too often. The springs of 
life are all from within. This being true, it would 
be well for us to give more time to the inner life 
than we are accustomed to give to it, especially in 
this Western World. • 

There is nothing that will bring us such abun¬ 
dant returns as to take a little time in the quiet each 
day of our lives. We need this to get the kinks out 
of our minds and hence out of our lives. We need 
this to form better the higher ideals of life. We 
need this in order to see clearly in mind the things 
upon which we would concentrate and focus the 
thought-forces. We need this in order to make 
continually anew and to keep our conscious connec¬ 
tion with the Infinite. We need this in order that 
the rush and hurry of our every-day life does not 
keep us away from the conscious realization of the 
fact that the spirit of Infinite life and power that 
is back of all, working in and through all, the life 
of all, is the life of our life, and the source of our 
power; and that outside of this we have no life and 
we have no power. To realize this fact fully, and 
to live in it consciously at all times, is to find the 


All Life from Within 


57 


kingdom of God, which is essentially an inner 
kingdom, and can never be anything else. The 
kingdom of heaven is to be found only within, and 
this is done once for all, and in a manner in which 
it cannot otherwise be done, when we come into the 
conscious, living realization of the fact that in our 
real selves we are essentially one with the Divine 
life, and open ourselves continually so that this 
Divine life can speak to and manifest through us. 
In this way we come into the condition where we 
are continually walking with God. In this way the 
consciousness of God becomes a living reality in 
our lives; and in the degree in which it becomes 
a reality does it bring us into the realization of con¬ 
tinually increasing wisdom, insight, and power. 
This consciousness of God in the sold of man is the 
essence, indeed the sum and substance of all religion. 
This identifies religion with every act and every 
moment of every-day life. That which does not 
identify itself with every moment of every day and 
with every act of life is religion in name only and 
not in reality. 

It is the attitude of the child that is necessary 
before we can enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
As it was said, “ Except ye become as little chil¬ 
dren, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 
For we then realize that of ourselves we can do 
nothing, but that it is only as we realize that it is 
the Divine life and powef working within us, and 


58 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


it is only as we open ourselves that it may work 
through us, that we are or can do anything. It is 
thus that the simple life, which is essentially the life 
of the greatest enjoyment and the greatest attain¬ 
ment, is entered upon. 

In the Orient the people as a class take far more 
time in the quiet, in the silence, than we take. 
Some of them carry this possibly to as great an 
extreme as we carry the opposite, with the result 
that they do not actualize and objectify in the outer 
life the things they dream in the inner life. We 
give so much time to the activities of the outer life 
that we do not take sufficient time in the quiet to 
form in the inner, spiritual thought-life the ideals 
and the conditions that we would have actualized 
and manifested in the outer life. The result is that 
we take life in a kind of haphazard way, taking it 
as it comes, thinking not very much about it until, 
perhaps, pushed by some bitter experiences, instead 
of moulding it, through the agency of the inner 
forces, exactly as we would have it. We need to 
strike the happy balance between the custom in this 
respect of the Eastern and Western worlds, and 
go to the extreme of neither the one nor the other. 

If the Oriental would do his contemplating, and 
then get up and do his work, he would be in a 
better condition; he would be living a more normal 
and satisfactory life. If we in the Occident would 
take more time from the rush and activity of life 
for contemplation, for meditation, for idealization, 


All Life from Within 


59 


for becoming acquainted with our real selves, and 
then go about our work manifesting the powers of 
our real selves, we would be far better off, because 
we would be living a more natural, a more normal 
life. To find one’s centre, to become centred in the 
Infinite, is the first great essential of every satis¬ 
factory life; and then to go out, thinking, speaking, 
working, loving, living, from this centre. 

Character-Building Thought Power. 


XVIII. 


HEREDITY AND THE HIGHER POWER. 

In the highest character-building, such as we 
have been considering, there are those who feel they 
are handicapped by what we term heredity. In a 
sense they are right; in another sense they are 
totally wrong. It is along the same lines as the 
thought which many before us had inculcated in 
them through the couplet in the New England 
Primer: “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” Now, 
in the first place, it is rather hard to understand 
the justice of this if it is true. In the second place, 
it is rather hard to understand why it is true. And 
in the third place there is no truth in it at all. We 
are now dealing with the real essential self, and, 
however old Adam is, God is eternal. This means 
you; it means me; it means every human soul. 
When we fully realize this fact we see that heredity 
is a reed that is easily broken. The life of every 
one is in his own hands and he can make it in char¬ 
acter, in attainment, in power, in divine self-reali¬ 
zation, and hence in influence, exactly what he wills 
to make it. All things that he most fondly dreams 
of are his, or may become so if he is truly in ear¬ 
nest; and as he rises more and more to his ideal, 
and grows in the strength and influence of his char- 


Heredity and the Higher Power 61 

acter, he becomes an example and an inspiration 
to all with whom he comes in contact; so that 
through him the weak and faltering are encouraged 
and strengthened; so that those of low ideals and 
of a low type of life instinctively and inevitably 
have their ideals raised, and the ideals of no one 
can be raised without its showing forth in his 
outer life. As he advances in his grasp upon and 
understanding of the power and potency of the 
thought-forces, he finds that many times through 
the process of mental suggestion he can be of tre¬ 
mendous aid to one who is weak and struggling, 
by sending to him now and then, and by continu¬ 
ally holding him in the highest thought, in the 
thought of the highest strength, wisdom, and love. 

The one who takes sufficient time in the quiet 
mentally to form his ideals, sufficient time to make 
and to keep continually his conscious connection 
with the Infinite, with the Divine life and forces, 
is the one who is best adapted to the strenuous life. 
He it is who can go out and deal with sagacity and 
power with whatever issues may arise in the affairs 
of every-day life. He it is who is building not for 
the years, but for the centuries; not for time, but 
for the eternities. And he can go out knowing not 
whither he goes, knowing that the Divine life 
within him will never fail him, but will lead him on 
until he beholds the Father face to face. 

He is building for the centuries because only 
that which is the highest, the truest, the noblest, 




62 This Mystical Life of Ours 

and best will abide the test of the centuries. He 
is building for eternity because when the transition 
we call death takes place, life, character, self- 
mastery, divine self-realization,—the only things 
that the soul when stripped of everything else takes 
with it,—he has in abundance. In life, or when the 
time of the transition to another form of life comes, 
he is never afraid, never fearful, because he knows 
and realizes that behind him, within him, beyond 
him, is the Infinite wisdom and love; and in this 
he is eternally centred, and from it he can never be 
separated. With Whittier he sings: 

“I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care.” 
Character-Building Thought Power. 


XIX. 


CASTLES IN THE AIR. 

In our very laboratory experiments we are dem¬ 
onstrating the great fact that thoughts are forces. 
They have form, and quality, and substance, and 
power, and we are beginning to find that there is 
what we may term a science of thought. 

Everything in the material universe about us, 
everything the universe has ever known, had its 
origin first in thought. From this it took its form. 
Every castle, every statue, every painting, every 
piece of mechanism, everything had its birth, its 
origin, first in the mind of the one who formed it 
before it received its material expression or em¬ 
bodiment. The very universe in which we live is 
the result of the thought energies of God, the In¬ 
finite Spirit that is back of all. And if it is true, 
as we have found, that we in our true selves are in 
essence the same, and in this sense are one with 
the life of this Infinite Spirit, do we not then see 
that in the degree that we come into a vital reali¬ 
zation of this stupendous fact, we, through the 
operation of our interior, spiritual, thought forces, 
have in like sense creative power? 

Everything exists in the unseen before it is mani- 


64 This Mystical Life of Ours 

fested or realized in the seen, and in this sense it 
is true that the unseen things are the real, while 
the things that are seen are the unreal. The un¬ 
seen things are cause ; the seen things are effect. 
The unseen things are the eternal; the seen things 
are the changing, the transient. 

The “ power of the word ” is a literal scientific 
fact. Through the operation of our thought forces 
we have creative power. The spoken word is noth¬ 
ing more nor less than the outward expression of 
the workings of these interior forces. The spoken 
word is then, in a sense, the means whereby the 
thought forces are focused and directed along any 
particular line; and this concentration, this giving 
them direction, is necessary before any outward or 
material manifestation of their power can become 
evident. 

Much is said in regard to “ building castles in 
the air,” and one who is given to this building is 
not always looked upon with favor. But castles in 
the air are always necessary before we can have 
castles on the ground, before we can have castles 
in which to live. The trouble with the one who 
gives himself to building castles in the air is not 
that he builds them in the air, but that he does not 
go farther and actualize in life, in character, in 
material form, the castles he thus builds. He does 
a part of the work, a very necessary part; but an¬ 
other equally necessary part remains still undone. 

There is in connection with the thought forces 


Castles in the Air 


65 


what we may term, the drawing power of mind, 
and the great law operating here is one with that 
great law of the universe, that like attracts like. 
We are continually attracting to us from both the 
seen and the unseen side of life, forces and condi¬ 
tions most akin to those of our own thoughts. 

This law is continually operating whether we are 
conscious of it or not. We are all living, so to 
speak, in a vast ocean of thought, and the very 
atmosphere around us is continually filled with the 
thought forces that are being continually sent or 
that are continually going out in the form of 
thought waves. We are all affected, more or less, 
by these thought forces, either consciously or un¬ 
consciously; and in the degree that we are more 
or less sensitively organized, or in the degree that 
we are negative and so are open to outside influ¬ 
ences, rather than positive, thus determining what 
influences shall enter into our realm of thought, 
and hence into our lives. 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XX. 


THE ANCHOR OF THE SENSITIVELY 
ORGANIZED. 

There are those among us who are much more 
sensitively organized than others. As an organism 
their bodies are more finely, more sensitively con¬ 
structed. These, generally speaking, are people 
who are always more or less affected by the men¬ 
talities of those with whom they come in contact, 
or in whose company they are. A friend, the editor 
of one of our great journals, is so sensitively or¬ 
ganized that it is impossible for him to attend a 
gathering, such as a reception, talk and shake hands 
with a number of people during the course of the 
evening, without taking on to a greater or less ex¬ 
tent their various mental and physical conditions. 
These affect him to such an extent that he is scarcely 
himself and in his best condition for work until 
some two or three days afterward. 

Some think it unfortunate for one to be sensi¬ 
tively organized. By no means. It is a good thing, 
for one may thus be more open and receptive to 
the higher impulses of the soul within, and to all 
higher forces and influences from without. It may, 
however, be unfortunate and extremely inconven¬ 
ient to be so organized unless one recognize and 


The Anchor of the Sensitively Organized 67 

gain the power of closing himself, of making him¬ 
self positive to all detrimental or undesirable in¬ 
fluences. This power every one, however sensi¬ 
tively organized he may be, can acquire. 

This he can acquire through the mind’s action. 
And, moreover, there is no habit of more value 
to anyone, be he sensitively or less sensitively or¬ 
ganized, than that of occasionally taking and hold¬ 
ing himself continually in the attitude of mind—I 
close myself, I make myself positive to all things 
below, and open and receptive to all higher influ¬ 
ences, to all things above. By taking this attitude 
of mind consciously now and then, it soon becomes 
a habit, and if one is deeply in earnest in regard to 
it, it puts into operation silent but subtle and power¬ 
ful influences in effecting the desired results. In 
this way all lower and undesirable influences from 
both the seen and the unseen side of life are closed 
out, while all higher influences are invited, and in 
the degree that they are invited will they enter. 

The fact of life in whatever form, means the con¬ 
tinuance of life, even though the form be changed. 
Life is the one eternal principle of the universe and 
so always continues, even though the form of the 
agency through which it manifests be changed. 
“ In my Father’s house are many mansions.” And 
surely, because the individual has dropped, has 
gone out of the physical body, there is no evidence 
at all that the life does not go right on the same 


68 This Mystical Life of Ours 

as before, not commencing,—for there is no cessa¬ 
tion,—but commencing in the other form, exactly 
where it has left off here; for all life is a continu¬ 
ous evolution, step by step; there one neither skips 
nor jumps. 

We cannot rationally believe other than that 
those who have labored in love and with uplifting 
power here are still laboring in the same way, and 
in all probability with more earnest zeal, and with 
still greater power. 

“ And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, 
open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord 
opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: 
and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and 
chariots of fire round about Elisha.” 

In Tune zvith the Infinite. 


XXL 


HOW WE ATTRACT SUCCESS OR 
FAILURE. 

As science is so abundantly demonstrating to¬ 
day,—the things that we see are but a very small 
fraction of the things that are. The real, vital 
forces at work in our own lives and in the world 
about us are not seen by the ordinary physical eye. 
Yet they are the causes of which all things we see 
are merely the effects. Thoughts are forces; like 
builds like, and like attracts like. For one to gov¬ 
ern his thinking, then, is to determine his life. 

Says one of deep insight into the nature of 
things: “ The law of correspondences between 
spiritual and material things is wonderfully exact 
in its workings. People ruled by the mood of gloom 
attract to them gloomy things. People always dis¬ 
couraged and despondent do not succeed in any¬ 
thing, and live only by burdening some one else. 
The hopeful, confident, and cheerful attract the 
elements of success. A man’s front or back yard 
will advertise that man’s ruling mood in the way it 
is kept. A woman at home shows her state of mind 
in her dress. A slattern advertises the ruling mood 
of hopelessness, carelessness, and lack of system. 
Rags, tatters, and dirt are always in the mind be¬ 
fore being on the body. The thought that is most 
put out brings its corresponding visible element to 


70 This Mystical Life of Ours 

crystallize about you as surely and literally as the 
visible bit of copper in solution attracts to it the 
invisible copper in that solution. A mind always 
hopeful, confident, courageous, and determined on 
its set purpose, and keeping itself to that purpose, 
attracts to itself out of the elements things and 
powers favorable to that purpose. 

“ Every thought of yours has a literal value to 
you in every possible way. The strength of your 
body, the strength of your mind, your success in 
business, and the pleasure your company brings 
others, depends on the nature of your thoughts. 
... In whatever mood you set your mind does 
your spirit receive of unseen substance in corre¬ 
spondence with that mood. It is as much a chem¬ 
ical law as a spiritual law. Chemistry is not con¬ 
fined to the elements we see. The elements we do 
not see with the physical eye outnumber ten thou¬ 
sand times those we do see.” 

Faith is nothing more nor less than the operation 
of the thought forces in the form of an earnest de¬ 
sire, coupled with expectation as to its fulfillment. 
And in the degree that faith, the earnest desire thus 
sent out, is continually held to and watered by firm 
expectation, in just that degree does it either draw 
to itself, or does it change from the unseen into the 
visible, from the spiritual into the material, that 
for which it is sent. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXII. 


FEAR BRINGS FAILURE. 

Nothing is more subtle than thought, nothing 
more powerful, nothing more irresistible in its 
operations, when rightly applied and held to with 
a faith and fidelity that is unswerving,—a faith and 
fidelity that never knows the neutralizing effects of 
doubt and fear. If one have aspirations and a sin¬ 
cere desire for a higher and better condition, so far 
as advantages, facilities, associates, or any sur¬ 
roundings or environments are concerned, and if 
he continually send out his highest thought forces 
for the realization of these desires, and continually 
water these forces with firm expectation as to their 
fulfillment, he will sooner or later find himself in 
the realization of these desires, and all in accordance 
with natural laws and forces. 

Fear brings its own fulfillment the same as hope. 
The same law operates, and if, as our good and 
valued friend, Job, said when the darkest days 
were setting in upon him, That which I feared has 
come upon me,—was true, how much more surely 
could he have brought about the opposite condi¬ 
tions, those he would have desired, had he had 
even the slightest realization of his own powers, 
and had he acted the part of the master instead of 


72 


This Mystical Life of Ours 

that of the servant, had he dictated terms instead 
of being dictated to, and thus suffering the con¬ 
sequences. 

If one finds himself in any particular condition, 
in the midst of any surroundings or environments 
that are not desirable, that have nothing—at least 
for any length of time—that is of value to him, for 
his highest life and unfoldment, he has the remedy 
entirely within his own grasp the moment he re¬ 
alizes the power and supremacy of the forces of the 
mind and spirit; and, unless he intelligently use 
these forces, he drifts. Unless through them he 
becomes master and dictates, he becomes the slave 
and is dictated to, and so is driven hither and 
thither. 

Earnest, sincere desire, sincere aspiration for 
higher and better conditions or means to realize 
them, the thought-forces actively sent out for their 
realization, these continually watered by firm ex¬ 
pectation without allowing the contrary, neutraliz¬ 
ing force of fear ever to enter in,—this, accom¬ 
panied by rightly directed work and activity, will 
bring about the fullest realization of one’s highest 
desires and aspirations with a certainty as absolute 
as that effect follows cause. Each and every one 
of us can thus make for himself ever higher and 
higher conditions, can attract ever higher and higher 
influences, can realize an ever higher and higher 
ideal in life. These are the forces that are within 
us, simply waiting to be recognized and used,—the 


73 


Fear Brings Failure 

forces that we should infuse into and mould every¬ 
day life with. The moment we vitally recognize 
them, they become our servants and wait upon our 
bidding. 

We are born to be neither slaves nor beggars, 
but to dominion and to plenty. This is our right¬ 
ful heritage, if we will but recognize and lay claim 
to it. Many a man and many a woman is to-day 
longing for conditions better and higher than he 
or she is in, who might be using the same time now 
spent in vain, indefinite, spasmodic longings, in 
putting into operation forces which, accompanied 
by the right personal activity, would speedily bring 
the fullest realization of his or her fondest dreams. 

What All the World’s A-Seeking. 


XXIII. 


HEART TRAINING THROUGH THE 
ANIMAL WORLD. 

It is an established fact that the training of the 
intellect alone is not sufficient. Nothing in this 
world can be truer than that the education of the 
head, without the training of the heart, simply in¬ 
creases one’s power for evil, while the education 
of the heart, along with the head, increases one’s 
power for good, and this, indeed, is the true educa¬ 
tion. 

Clearly we must begin with the child. The 
lessons learned in childhood are the last to be for¬ 
gotten. Let them be taught that the lower animals 
are God’s creatures, as they themselves are, put here 
by a common Heavenly Father, each for its own 
special purpose, and that they have the same right 
to life and protection. Let them be taught that 
principle recognised by all noble-hearted men, that 
it is only a depraved, debased, and cowardly nature 
that will injure an inferior, defenceless creature, 
simply because it is in its power to do so, and that 
there is no better, no grander test of true bravery 
and nobility of character than one’s treatment of 
the lower animals. 

I cannot refrain in this connection from quoting 


Heart Training through the Animal World 75 

a sentence or two from Archdeacon Farrar which 
have recently come to my notice: 

“ Not once or twice only, at the seaside, have I 
come across a sad and disgraceful sight—a sight 
which haunts me still—a number of harmless sea¬ 
birds lying defaced and dead upon the sand, their 
white plumage red with blood, as they had been 
tossed there, dead or half-dead, their torture and 
massacre having furnished a day’s amusement to 
heartless and senseless men. Amusement! I say 
execrable amusement! All killing for mere kill¬ 
ing’s sake is execrable amusement. Can you im¬ 
agine the stupid callousness, the utter insensibility 
to mercy and beauty > of the man who, seeing those 
bright, beautiful creatures as their white, immacu¬ 
late wings flash in the sunshine over the blue waves, 
can go out in a boat with his boys to teach them 
to become brutes in character by finding amuse¬ 
ment—I say, again, dis-humanising amusement— 
by wantonly murdering these fair birds of God, or 
cruelly wounding them, and letting them fly away 
to wait and die in lonely places ? ” 

And another paragraph which was sent me by a 
kind friend to our fellow-creatures a few days ago: 

“ The celebrated Russian novelist, Turgenieff, 
tells a most touching incident from his own life, 
which awakened in him sentiments that have col¬ 
oured all his writings with a deep and tender feel¬ 
ing. 

“ When Turgenieff was a boy of ten his father 


76 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


took him out one day bird-shooting. As they 
tramped across the brown stubble, a golden pheas¬ 
ant rose with a low whirr from the ground at his 
feet, and, with the joy of a sportsman throbbing 
through his veins, he raised his gun and fired, wild 
with excitement when the creature fell fluttering at 
his side. Life was ebbing fast, but the instinct of 
the mother was stronger than death itself, and with 
a feeble flutter of her wings the mother bird 
reached the nest where her young brood were hud¬ 
dled, unconscious of danger. Then, with such a 
look of pleading and reproach that his heart stood 
still at the ruin he had wrought,—and never to his 
dying day did he forget the feeling of cruelty and 
guilt that came to him in that moment,—the little 
brown head toppled over, and only the dead body 
of the mother shielded her nestlings. 

“ ‘ Father, father/ he cried, ‘ what have I done? ’ 
as he turned his horror-stricken face to his father. 
But not to his father’s eye had this little tragedy 
been enacted, and he said: ‘Well done, my son; 
that was well done for your first shot. You will 
soon be a fine sportsman.’ 

“ * Never, father; never again shall I destroy any 
living creature. If that is sport I will have none 
of it. Life is more beautiful to me than death, and 
since I cannot give life, I will not take it.’ ” 

And so, instead of putting into the hands of the 
child a gun or any other weapon that may be in¬ 
strumental in crippling, torturing, or taking the 


Heart Training through the Animal World 77 

life of even a single animal, I would give him the 
field-glass and the camera, and send him out to be 
a friend to the animals, to observe and study their 
characteristics, their habits, to learn from them 
those wonderful lessons that can be learned, and 
thus have his whole nature expand in admiration 
and love and care for them, and become thereby 
the truly manly and princely type of man, rather 
than the careless, callous, brutal type. 

Every Living Creature. 


XXIV. 


THE SECRET AND THE POWER OF 
LOVE. 


When we fully realize the great fact of the one¬ 
ness of all life,—that all are partakers from this 
one Infinite Source, and so that the same life is the 
life in each individual, then prejudices go and 
hatreds cease. Love grows and reigns supreme. 
Then, wherever we go, whenever we come in con¬ 
tact with the fellowman, we are able to recognize 
the God within. We thus look only for the good, 
and we find it. It always pays. 

There is a deep scientific fact underlying the 
great truth, “ He that takes the sword shall perish 
by the sword.” The moment we come into a re¬ 
alization of the subtle power of the thought forces, 
we can quickly see that the moment we entertain 
any thoughts of hatred toward another, he gets the 
effects of these diabolical forces that go out from 
us, and has the same thoughts of hatred aroused 
in him, which in turn return to the sender. Then 
when we understand the effects of the passion, 
hatred or anger, even upon the physical body, we 
can see how detrimental, how expensive this is. 
The same is true in regard to all kindred thoughts 
or passions, envy, criticism, jealousy, scorn. In the 


The Secret and the Power of Love 


ultimate we shall find that in entertaining feelings 
of this nature toward another, we always suffer 
far more than the one toward whom we entertain 
them. 

And then when we fully realize the fact that sel¬ 
fishness is at the root of all error, sin, and crime, 
and that ignorance is the basis of all selfishness, 
with what charity we come to look upon the acts 
of all. It is the ignorant man who seeks his own 
ends at the expense of the greater whole. It is 
the ignorant mari, therefore, who is the selfish man. 
The truly wise man is never selfish. He is a seer, 
and recognizes the fact that he, a single member 
of the one great body, is benefited in just the de¬ 
gree that the entire body is benefited, and so he 
seeks nothing for himself that he would not equally 
seek for all mankind. 

If selfishness is at the bottom of all error, sin, 
and crime, and ignorance is the basis of all selfish¬ 
ness, then when we see a manifestation of either of 
these qualities, if we are true to the highest within 
us, we will look for and will seek to call forth the 
good in each individual with whom we come in con¬ 
tact. When God speaks to God, then God re¬ 
sponds, and shows forth as God. But when devil 
speaks to devil, then devil responds, and the devil 
is always to pay. 

I sometimes hear a person say, “ I don’t see any 
good in him.” No? Then you are no seer. Look 
deeper and you will find the very God in every 


8o 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


human soul. But remember it takes a God to rec¬ 
ognize a God. Christ always spoke to the highest, 
the truest, and the best in men. He knew and he 
recognized the God in each because he had first 
realized it in himself. He ate with publicans and 
sinners. Abominable, the Scribes and Pharisees 
said. They were so wrapped up in their own con¬ 
ceits, their own self-centredness, hence their own 
ignorance, that they had never found the God in 
themselves, and so they never dreamed that it was 
the real life of even publicans and sinners. 

In the degree that we hold a person in the thought 
of evil or of error, do we suggest evil and error 
to him. In the degree that he is sensitively or¬ 
ganized, or not well individualized, and so, subject 
to the suggestions of the thought forces from 
others, will he be influenced; and so in this way we 
may be sharers in the very evildoing in which we 
hold another in thought. In the same way when 
we hold a person in the thought of the right, the 
good, and the true, righteousness, goodness, and 
truth are suggested to him, and thus we have a 
most beneficent influence on his life and conduct. 
If our hearts go out in love to all with whom we 
come in contact, we inspire love, and the same 
ennobling and warming influences of love always 
return to us from those in whom we inspire them. 
There is a deep scientific principle underlying the 
precept—If you would have all the world love you, 
you must first love all the world. 


The Secret and the Poiver of Love 81 

In the degree that we love will we be loved. 
Thoughts are forces. Each creates of its kind. 
Each comes back laden with the effect that cor¬ 
responds to itself and of which it is the cause. 

“Then let your secret thoughts be fair— 

They have a vital part, and share 
In shaping words and moulding fate; 

God’s system is so intricate.” 

I know of no better practice than that of a friend 
who continually holds himself in an attitude of 
mind that he continually sends out his love in the 
form of the thought,—“ Dear everybody, I love 
you.” And when we realize the fact that a thought 
invariably produces its effect before it returns, or 
before it ceases, we can see how he is continually 
breathing out a blessing not only upon all with 
whom he comes in contact, but upon all the world. 
These same thoughts of love, moreover, tokened in 
various ways, are continually coming to him from 
all quarters. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXV. 


THEN GIVE TO THE WORLD THE BEST 
YOU HAVE, AND THE BEST WILL 
COME BACK TO YOU. 

What a privilege and how enjoyable it would be 
to live and walk in a world where we meet only 
Gods. In such a world you can live. In such a 
world I can live. For in the degree that we come 
into this higher realization do we see only the God 
in each human soul; and when we are thus able 
to see him in every one we meet, we then live in 
such a world. 

And when we thus recognize the God in every 
one, we by this recognition help to call it forth 
ever more and more. What a privilege,—this priv¬ 
ilege of yours, this privilege of mine! That hypo¬ 
critical judging of another is something then with 
which we can have nothing to do; for we have the 
power of looking beyond the evolving, changing, 
error-making self, and seeing the real, the change¬ 
less, the eternal self which by and by will show 
forth in the full beauty of holiness. We are then 
large enough also to realize the fact that when we 
condemn another, by that very act we condemn 
ourselves. 

This realization so fills us with love that we con¬ 
tinually overflow it, and all with whom we come 


Give to the World the Best You Have 83 

in contact feel its warming and life-giving power. 
These in turn send back the same feelings of love 
to us, and so we continually attract love from all 
quarters. Tell me how much one loves and I will 
tell you how much he has seen of God. Tell me 
how much he loves and I will tell you how much 
he lives with God. Tell me how much he loves 
and I will tell you how far into the Kingdom of 
Heaven,—the kingdom of harmony, he has entered, 
for “ love is the fulfilling of the law.” 

And in a sense love is everything. It is the key 
to life, and its influences are those that move the 
world. Live only in the thought of love for all 
and you will draw love to you from all. Live in 
the thought of malice or hatred, and malice and 
hatred will come back to you. 

“For evil poisons; malice shafts 
Like boomerangs return, 

Inflicting wounds that will not heal 
While rage and anger burn.” 

Every thought you entertain is a force that goes 
out, and every thought comes back laden with its 
kind. This .is an immutable law. Every thought 
you entertain has moreover a direct effect upon 
your body. Love and its kindred emotions are the 
normal and the natural, those in accordance with 
the eternal order of the universe, for “ God is love.” 
These have a life-giving, health-engendering in¬ 
fluence upon your body, besides beautifying your 
countenance, enriching your voice, and making you 


8 4 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


ever more attractive in every way. And as it is 
true that in the degree that you hold thoughts of 
love for all, you call the same from them in return, 
and as these have a direct effect upon your mind, 
and through your mind upon your body, it is as so 
much life force added to your own from without. 
You are then continually building this into both 
your mental and your physical life, and so your 
life is enriched by its influence. 

Hatred and all its kindred emotions are the un¬ 
natural, the abnormal, the perversions, and so, out 
of harmony with the eternal order of the universe. 
For if love is the fulfilling of the law, then these, 
its opposites, are direct violations of law, and there 
can never be a violation of law without its attend¬ 
ant pain and suffering in one form or another. 
There is no escape from this. And what is the re¬ 
sult of this particular form of violation? When 
you allow thoughts of anger, hatred, malice, jeal¬ 
ousy, envy, criticism, or scorn to exercise sway, 
they have a corroding and poisoning effect upon 
the organism; they pull it down, and if allowed to 
continue will eventually tear it to pieces by exter¬ 
nalizing themselves in the particular forms of dis¬ 
ease they give rise to. And then in addition to the 
destructive influences from your own mind you are 
continually calling the same influences from other 
minds, and these come as destructive forces aug¬ 
menting your own, thus aiding in the tearing-down 
process. 


Give to the World the Best You Have 85 


And so love inspires love; hatred breeds hatred. 
Love and good will stimulate and build up the 
body; hatred and malice corrode and tear it down. 
Love is a savor of life unto life; hatred is a savor 
of death unto death. 

“There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave, 
There are souls that are pure and true; 

Then give to the world the best you have, 

And the best will come back to you. 

“Give love, and love to your heart will flow, 

A strength in your utmost need; 

Have faith, and a score of hearts will show 
Their faith in your word and deed.’’ 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXVI. 


HATRED NEVER CEASES BY HATRED, 
BUT BY LOVE. 

Love is positive, and stronger than hatred. 
Hatred can always be conquered by love. 

On the other hand, if you meet hatred with hatred, 
you simply intensify it. You add fuel to the flame 
already kindled, upon which it will feed and grow, 
and so you increase and intensify the evil condi¬ 
tions. Nothing is to be gained by it, everything is 
to be lost. By sending love for hatred you will be 
able to so neutralize it that it will not only have 
no effect upon you, but will not be able even to 
reach you. But more than this, you will by this 
course sooner or later be able literally to transmute 
the enemy into the friend. Meet hatred with hatred 
and you degrade yourself. Meet hatred with love 
and you elevate not only yourself but also the one 
who bears you hatred. 

The Persian sage has said, “ Always meet petu¬ 
lance with gentleness, and perverseness with kind¬ 
ness. A gentle hand can lead even an elephant by 
a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness. 
Opposition to peace is sin.” The Buddhist says, 
“ If a man foolishly does me wrong I will return 
him the protection of my ungrudging love. The 
more evil comes from him, the more good shall go 


Hatred Never Ceases by Hatred 87 

from me.” “ The wise man avenges injuries by 
benefits,” says the Chinese. “ Return good for evil, 
overcome anger by love; hatred never ceases by 
hatred, but by love,” says the Hindu. 

The truly wise man or woman will recognize no 
one as an enemy. Occasionally we hear the ex¬ 
pression, “Never mind; I’ll get even with him.” 
Will you? And how will you do it? You can do 
it in one of two ways. You can, as you have in 
mind, deal with him as he deals, or apparently 
deals, with you,—pay him, as we say, in his own 
coin. If you do this you will get even with him 
by sinking yourself to his level, and both of you 
will suffer by it. Or, you can show yourself the 
larger, you can send him love for hatred, kindness 
for ill-treatment, and so get even with him by rais¬ 
ing him to the higher level. But remember that you 
can never help another without by that very act 
helping yourself; and if forgetful of self, then in 
most all cases the value to vou is greater than the 
service you render another. If you are ready to 
treat him as he treats you, then you show clearly 
that there is in you that which draws the hatred 
and ill-treatment to you; you deserve what you 
are getting and should not complain, nor would 
you complain if you were wise. By following the 
other course you most effectually accomplish your 
purpose,—you gain a victory for yourself, and at 
the same time you do a great service for him, of 
which it is evident he stands greatly in need. 


88 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


Thus ’ may become his saviour. He in turn 
may become the saviour of other error-making, and 
consequently care-encumbered men and women. 
Many times the struggles are greater than we can 
ever know. We need more gentleness and sym¬ 
pathy and compassion in our common human life. 
Then we will neither blame nor condemn. Instead 
of blaming or condemning we will sympathize, and 
all the more we will 

‘ ‘ Comfort one another, 

For the way is often dreary, 

And the feet are often weary, 

And the heart is very sad. 

There is a heavy burden bearing, 

When it seems that none are caring, 

And we half forget that ever we were glad. 

“Comfort one another 
With the hand-clasp close and tender, 

With the sweetness love can render, 

And the looks of friendly eyes. 

Do not wait with grace unspoken, 

While life’s daily bread is broken— 

Gentle speech is oft like manna from the skies.” 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXVII. 


THOUGHT AND ITS INTELLIGENT 
DIRECTION. 

Of all known forms of energy, thought is the 
most subtle, the most irresistible force. It has al¬ 
ways been operating; but, so far as the great masses 
of the people are concerned, it has been operating 
blindly, or, rather, they have been blind to its 
mighty power, except in the cases of a few here 
and there. And these, as a consequence, have been 
our prophets, our seers, our sages, our saviors, our 
men of great and mighty power. We are just be¬ 
ginning to grasp the tremendous truth that there 
is a science of thought , and that the laws govern¬ 
ing it can be known and scientifically applied. 

Thought needs direction to be effective, and upon 
this effective results depend as much as upon the 
force itself. This brings us to the will. Will is 
not, as is so often thought, a force in itself; will 
is the directing power. Thought is the force. 
Will gives direction. Thought scattered gives the 
weak, the uncertain, the vacillating, the aspiring, 
but the never-doing, the I-would-like-to, but the 
get-no-where, the attain-to-nothing man or woman. 
Thought steadily directed by the will gives the 


go This Mystical Life of Ours 

strong, the firm, the never-yielding, the never- 
know-defeat man or woman, the man or woman 
who uses the very difficulties and hindrances that 
would dishearten the ordinary person, as stones 
with which he paves a way over which he triumph¬ 
antly walks, who, by the very force he carries 
with him, so neutralizes and transmutes the very 
obstacles that would bar his way that they fall be¬ 
fore him, and in turn aid him on his way; the man 
or woman who, like the eagle, uses the very con¬ 
trary wind that would thwart his flight, that would 
turn him and carry him in the opposite direction, 
as the very agency upon which he mounts and 
mounts and mounts, until actually lost to the hu¬ 
man eye, and which, in addition to thus aiding him, 
brings to him an ever fuller realization of his own 
powers, or in other words, an ever greater power. 

It is this that gives the man or the woman who 
in storm or in sunny weather, rides over every 
obstacle, throws before him every barrier, and, as 
Browning has said, finally “ arrives.” Take, for 
example, the successful business man,—for it is 
all one, the law is the same in all cases,—the man 
who started with nothing except his own interior 
equipments. He has made up his mind to one 
thing,—success. This is his ideal. He thinks suc¬ 
cess, he sees success. He refuses to see anything 
else. He expects success: he thus attracts it to 
him, his thought-forces continually attract to him 
every agency that makes for success. He has set 


Thought and Its Intelligent Direction 91 

up the current, so that every wind that blows brings 
him success. He doesn’t expect failure, and so he 
doesn’t invite it. He has no time, no energies, to 
waste in fears or forebodings. He is dauntless, 
untiring, in his efforts. Let disaster come to-day, 
and to-morrow—ay, even yet to-day—he is getting 
his bearings, he is setting forces anew into opera¬ 
tion; and these very forces are of more value to 
him than the half million dollars of his neighbor 
who has suffered from the same disaster. We 
speak of a man’s failing in business, little thinking 
that the real failure came long before, and that the 
final crash is but the culmination, the outward vis¬ 
ible manifestation, of the real failure that occurred 
within possibly long ago. A man carries his suc¬ 
cess or his failure with him: it is not dependent 
upon outside conditions. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


XXVIII. 


WILL—THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE. 

Will is the steady directing power: it is concen¬ 
tration. It is the pilot which, after the vessel is 
started by the mighty force within, puts it on its 
right course and keeps it true to that course. 

Will is the sun-glass which so concentrates and 
so focuses the sun’s rays that they quickly burn 
a hole through the paper that is held before it. 
The same rays, not thus concentrated, not thus 
focused, would fall upon the paper for days with¬ 
out any effect whatever. Will is the means for the 
directing, the concentrating, the focusing, of the 
thought-forces. Thought under wise direction,— 
this it is that does the work, that brings results, 
that makes the successful career. One object in 
mind which we never lose sight of; an ideal stead¬ 
ily held before the mind, never lost sight of, never 
lowered, never swerved from,—this, with persist¬ 
ence, determines all. Nothing can resist the power 
of thought, when thus directed by will. 

May not this power, then, be used for base as 
well as for good purposes, for selfish as well as 
for unselfish ends? The same with this modifica¬ 
tion,—the more highly thought is spiritualized, 


Will—the Human and the Divine 93 

the more subtle and powerful it becomes; and the 
more highly spiritualized the life, the farther is it 
removed from base, ignoble, selfish ends. But, 
even if it can be thus used, let him who would so 
use it be careful, let him never forget that that 
mighty, searching, omnipotent law of the right, 
of truth, of justice, that runs through all the uni¬ 
verse and that can never be annulled or even for 
a moment set aside, will drive him to the wall, will 
crush him with a terrific force if he so use it. 

Let him never forget that whatever he may get 
for self at the expense of some one else, through 
deception, through misrepresentation, through the 
exercise of the lower functions and powers, will by 
a law equally subtle, equally powerful, be turned 
into ashes in his very hands. The honey he thinks 
he has secured will be turned into bitterness as he 
attempts to eat it; the beautiful fruit he thinks 
is his will be as wormwood as he tries to enjoy it; 
the rose he has plucked will vanish, and he will 
find himself clutching a handful of thorns, which 
will penetrate to the very quick and which will flow 
the very life-blood from his hands. For through 
the violation of a higher, an immutable law, though 
he may get this or that, the power of true enjoy¬ 
ment will be taken away, and what he gets will 
become as a thorn in his side: either this or it will 
sooner or later escape from his hands. God’s tri¬ 
umphal car moves in a direction and at a rate that 
is certain and absolute, and he who would oppose 


94 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


it or go contrary to it must fall and be crushed 
beneath its wheels; and for him this crushing is 
necessary, in order that it may bring him the more 
quickly to a knowledge of the higher laws, to a 
realization of the higher self. 

This brings to our notice two orders of will, 
which we may term, for convenience’ sake, the hu¬ 
man and the divine. The human will is the one 
just noticed, the sense will, the will of the lower 
self, that which seeks its own ends regardless of 
its connection with the greater whole. The divine 
will is the will of the higher self, the God-self, that 
never makes an error, that never leads into diffi¬ 
culties. 

It is thus that the Infinite Power works through 
and for us—true inspiration—while our part is 
simply to see that our connection with this power 
is consciously and perfectly kept. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


XXIX. 


THE SECRET OF THE HIGHEST POWER. 

The secret of the highest power is simply the 
uniting of the outer agencies of expression with the 
Power that works from within . Are you a painter ? 
Then in the degree that you open yourself to the 
power of the forces within will you become great 
instead of mediocre. You can never put into per¬ 
manent form inspirations higher than those that 
come through your own soul. In order for the 
higher inspirations to come through it, you must 
open your soul, you must open it fully to the Su¬ 
preme Source of all inspiration. Are you an 
orator ? In the degree that you come into harmony 
and work in conjunction with the higher powers 
that will speak through you will you have the real 
power of moulding and of moving men. If you 
use merely your physical agents, you will be simply 
a demagogue. If you open yourself so that the 
voice of God can speak through and use your 
physical agents, you will become a great and true 
orator, great and true in just the degree that you 
so open yourself. 

Are you a singer? Then open yourself and let 
the God within pour forth in the spirit of song. 
You will find it a thousand times easier than all 


9 6 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


your long and studied practice without this, and 
other things being equal, there will come to you a 
power of song so enchanting and so enrapturing 
that its influence upon all who hear will be irre¬ 
sistible. 

When my cabin or tent has been pitched during 
the summer on the edge or in the midst of a forest, 
I have sometimes lain awake on my cot in the 
early morning, just as the day was beginning to 
break. Silence at first. Then an intermittent 
chirp here and there. And as the unfolding tints 
of the dawn became faintly perceptible, these grew 
more and more frequent, until by and by the whole 
forest seemed to burst forth in one grand chorus 
of song. Wonderful! wonderful! It seemed as if 
the very trees, as if every grass-blade, as if the 
bushes, the very sky above, and the earth beneath, 
had part in this wonderful symphony. Then, as I 
have listened as it went on and on, I have thought, 
What a study in the matter of song! If we could 
but learn from the birds. If we could but open 
ourselves to the same powers and allow them to 
pour forth in us, what singers, what movers of 
men we might have! Nay, what singers and what 
movers of men we would have! 

When we open ourselves to the highest inspira¬ 
tions they never fail us. When we fail to do this 
we fail in attaining the highest results, whatever 
the undertaking. 


The Secret of the Highest Power 97 

Are you a writer? Then remember that the one 
great precept underlying all successful literary 
work is, Look into thine own heart and write . 
Be true. Be fearless. Be loyal to the promptings 
of your own soul. Remember that an author can 
never write more than he himself is. If he would 
write more, then he must be more. He is simply 
his own amanuensis. He in a sense writes himself 
into his book. He can put no more into it than 
he himself is. 

If he is one of a great personality, strong in pur¬ 
pose, deep in feeling, open always to the highest 
inspirations, a certain indefinable something gets 
into his pages that makes them breathe forth a 
vital, living power, a power so great that each 
reader gets the same inspirations as those that 
spoke through the author. That that’s written be¬ 
tween the lines is many times more than that that’s 
written in the lines. It is the spirit of the author 
that engenders this power. 

The one, on the other hand, who fears to de¬ 
part from beaten paths, who allows himself to be 
bound by arbitrary rules, limits his own creative 
powers in just the degree that he allows himself 
so to be bound. “ My book,” says one of the great¬ 
est of modern authors, “ shall smell of the pines 
and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow 
over my window shall interweave that thread or 
straw he carries in his bill into my web also.” Far 


98 This Mystical Life of Ours 

better, gentle sage, to have it smell of the pines 
and resound with the hum of insects than to have 
it sound of the rules that a smaller type of man 
gets by studying the works of a few great, fear¬ 
less writers like yourself, and formulating from 
what he thus gains a handbook of rhetoric. “ Of 
no use are the men who study to do exactly as was 
done before, who can never understand that to-day 
is a new day.” 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXX. 


WISDOM: OR INTERIOR ILLUMINATION. 

In order for the highest wisdom and insight we 
must have absolute confidence in the Divine guid¬ 
ing us, but not through the channel of some one 
else. And why should we go to another for knowl¬ 
edge and wisdom? With God is no respect of 
persons. Why should we seek these things second 
hand ? Why should we thus stultify our own innate 
powers? Why should we not go direct to the In¬ 
finite Source itself? “ If any man lack wisdom let 
him ask of God.” “ Before they call I will answer, 
and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” 

When we thus go directly to the Infinite Source 
itself we are no longer slaves to personalities, in¬ 
stitutions, or books. We should always keep our¬ 
selves open to suggestions of truth from these agen¬ 
cies. We should always regard them as agencies, 
however, and never as sources. We should never 
recognize them as masters, but simply as teachers. 
With Browning, we must recognize the great fact 
that— 

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise 
From outward things, whate’er you may believe. 
There is an inmost centre in us all, 

Where truth abides in fullness.” 


tore 


ioo This Mystical Life of Ours 

There is no more important injunction in all the 
world, nor one with a deeper interior meaning, than 
“ To thine own self be true.” In other words, be 
true to your own soul, for it is through your own 
soul that the voice of God speaks to you. This is 
the interior guide. This is the light that lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world. This is 
conscience. This is intuition. This is the voice of 
the higher self, the voice of the soul, the voice of 
God. “ Thou shalt hear a voice behind thee, say¬ 
ing: This is the way, walk ye in it.” 

When Elijah was on the mountain it was after 
the various physical commotions and manifesta¬ 
tions that he heard the “ still, small voice,” the 
voice of his own soul, through which the Infinite 
God was speaking. If we will but follow this voice 
of intuition, it will speak ever more clearly and more 
plainly, until by and by it will be absolute and un¬ 
erring in its guidance. The great trouble with us 
is that we do not listen to and do not follow this 
voice within our own souls, and so we become as 
a house divided against itself. We are pulled this 
way and that, and we are never certain of anything. 
I have a friend who listens so carefully to this 
inner voice, who, in other words, always acts so 
quickly, and so fully in accordance with his intu¬ 
itions, and whose life as a consequence is so abso¬ 
lutely guided by them, that he always does the 
right thing at the right time and in the right way. 
He always knows when to act and how to act, and 


Wisdom : Or Interior Illumination 


IOI 


he is never in the condition of a house divided 
against itself. 

But some one says, “ May it not be dangerous for 
us to act always upon our intuitions? Suppose we 
should have an intuition to do harm to some one? ” 
We need not be afraid of this, however, for the 
voice of the soul, this voice of God speaking 
through the soul, will never direct one to do harm 
to another, nor to do anything that is not in ac¬ 
cordance with the highest standards of right, and 
truth, and justice. And if you at any time have a 
prompting of this kind, know that it is not the voice 
of intuition; it is some characteristic of your lower 
self that is prompting you. 

Reason is not to be set aside, but it is to be con¬ 
tinually illumined by this higher spiritual percep¬ 
tion, and in the degree that it is thus illumined will 
it become an agent of light and power. When one 
becomes thoroughly individualized he enters into 
the realm of all knowledge and wisdom; and to 
be individualized is to recognize no power outside 
of the Infinite Power that is back of all. When 
one recognizes this great fact and opens himself 
to this Spirit of Infinite Wisdom, he then enters 
upon the road to the true education, and mysteries 
that before were closed now reveal themselves to 
him. This must indeed be the foundation of all 
true education, this evolving from within, this 
evolving of what has been involved by the In¬ 
finite Power. 


102 This Mystical Life of Ours 

There are no new stars, there are no new laws 
or forces, but we can so open ourselves to this 
Spirit of Infinite Wisdom that we can discover 
and recognize those that have not been known be¬ 
fore ; and in this way they become new to us. 

“ This is true wisdom. Wisdom is the knowledge 
of God.” Wisdom comes by intuition. It far trans¬ 
cends knowledge. Great knowledge, knowledge of 
many things, may be had by virtue simply of a very 
retentive memory. It comes by tuition. But wis¬ 
dom far transcends knowledge, in that knowledge 
is a mere incident of this deeper wisdom. 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXXI. 


LET THERE BE MANY WINDOWS IN 
YOUR SOUL. 

He who would enter into the realm of wisdom 
must first divest himself of all intellectual pride. 
He must become as a little child. Prejudices, pre¬ 
conceived opinions, and beliefs always stand in the 
way of true wisdom. Conceited opinions are always 
suicidal in their influences. They bar the door to 
the entrance of truth. 

All about us we see men in the religious world, 
in the world of science, in the political, in the so¬ 
cial world, who through intellectual pride are so 
wrapped in their own conceits and prejudices that 
larger and later revelations of truth can find no en¬ 
trance to them; and instead of growing and expand¬ 
ing, they are becoming dwarfed and stunted, and 
still more incapable of receiving truth. Instead of 
actively aiding in the progress of the world, they 
are as so many dead sticks in the way that would 
retard the wheels of progress. This, however, they 
can never do. Such always in time get bruised, 
broken, and left behind, while God’s triumphal car 
of truth moves steadily onward. 

When the steam engine was still being experi¬ 
mented with, and before it was perfected sufficiently 


104 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


to come into practical use, a well-known English¬ 
man—well known then in scientific circles—wrote 
an extended pamphlet proving that it would be im¬ 
possible for it ever to be used in ocean navigation, 
that is, in a trip involving the crossing of the ocean, 
because it would be utterly impossible for any ves¬ 
sel to carry with it sufficient coal for the use of its 
furnace. And the interesting feature of the whole 
matter was that the very first steam vessel that made 
the trip from England to America, had among its 
cargo a part of the first edition of this carefully pre¬ 
pared pamphlet. There was only the one edition. 
Many editions might be sold now. 

This seems indeed an amusing fact; but far more 
amusing is the man who voluntarily closes himself 
to truth because, forsooth, it does not come through 
conventional, or orthodox, or heretofore accepted 
channels; or because it may not be in full accord 
with, or possibly may be opposed to, established 
usages or beliefs. On the contrary— 

“Let there be many windows in your soul, 

That all the glory of the universe 

May beautify it. Not the narrow pane 

Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays 

That shine from countless sources. Tear away 

The blinds of superstition: let the light 

Pour through fair windows, broad as truth itself 

And high as heaven. . . . Tune your ear 

To all the wordless music of the stars 

And to the voice of nature, and your heart 

Shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant 

Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands 


Let there he Windows in Your Soul 105 

Reach down to help you to their peace-crowned heights, 
And all the forces of the firmament 
Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid 
To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.” 

There is a great law in connection with the com¬ 
ing of truth. It is this: Whenever a man or a 
woman shuts himself or herself to the entrance of 
truth on account of intellectual pride, preconceived 
opinions, prejudices, or for whatever reason, there 
is a great law which says that truth in its fullness 
will come to that one from no source. And on the 
other hand, when a man or a woman opens himself 
or herself fully to the entrance of truth from what¬ 
ever source it may come, there is an equally great 
law which says that truth will flow in to him or to 
her from all sources, from all quarters. Such be¬ 
comes the free man, the free woman, for it is the 
truth that makes us free. The other remains in 
bondage, for truth has had no invitation and will 
not enter where it is not fully and freely welcomed. 

And where truth is denied entrance the rich bless¬ 
ings it carries with it cannot take up their abode. 
On the contrary, when this is the case, it sends an 
envoy carrying with it atrophy, disease, death, physi¬ 
cally and spiritually as well as intellectually. And 
the man who would rob another of his free and un¬ 
fettered search for truth, who would stand as the 
interpreter of truth for another, with the intent of 
remaining in this position, rather than endeavoring 
to lead him to the place where he can be his own 


106 This Mystical Life of Ours 

interpreter, is more to be shunned than a thief and 
a robber. The injury he works is far greater, for 
he is doing direct and positive injury to the very 
life of the one he thus holds. 

Who has ever appointed any man, whoever he 
may be, as the keeper, the custodian, the dispenser 
of God’s illimitable truth? Many indeed are moved 
and so are called to be teachers of truth; but the 
true teacher will never stand as the interpreter of 
truth for another. The true teacher is the one 
whose endeavor is to bring the one he teaches to 
a true knowledge of himself and hence of his own 
interior powers, that he may become his own in¬ 
terpreter. All others are, generally speaking, 
those animated by purely personal motives, self-ag¬ 
grandizement, or personal gain. Moreover, he who 
would claim to have all truth and the only truth, 
is a bigot, a fool, or a knave. 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXXII. 


AS TO THE QUALITY OF OUR EDUCA¬ 
TION. 

Every child in school until a certain age or until a 
sufficient equipment to meet the ordinary duties of 
life is reached, should be the nation’s motto.. 

It is also eminently fitting that something be said 
of the quality of the education it is proposed to 
make compulsory attendance upon universal. To 
come at once to the point in mind and briefly— 
training of the intellect alone is not sufficient; we 
shall remain a long way off from the ideal until 
we make moral, humane, heart-training a far more 
important feature of our educational systems than 
we have made it thus far. We are advancing in 
this respect, but we have great advances yet to 
make. Kindness and consideration, sympathy and 
fraternity, love of justice—the full and ready will¬ 
ingness to give it as well as to demand it, the clear- 
cut comprehension of the majesty and beauty that 
escapes into the life of the individual as he under¬ 
stands and appropriates to himself the all-embrac¬ 
ing contents of the golden rule. The training of 
the intellect alone at the expense of the “ human¬ 
ities ” has made or has enlarged the power of many 
a criminal, many a usurper of other men’s homes 


108 This Mystical Life of Ours 

and property, many an oppressor, and has thereby 
added poison and desolation to his own life as well 
as to the lives of those with whom he has come in 
contact and who have felt his blighting and wither¬ 
ing influence. It is also chiefly from those without 
this training, that that great body of our fellow-crea¬ 
tures which we term the animal world, receive their 
most thoughtless and cruel treatment, and perhaps 
from among none more than among the rich and 
fashionable. 

I think there is another feature in our educational 
systems that we would do wisely to give more at¬ 
tention to. In a nation of free institutions, more 
attention could wisely be given to systematic and 
concrete instruction in connection with the insti¬ 
tutions of government, and in connection with this 
a training in civic pride that sees to it that our 
public offices are filled with men of at least ordinary 
honesty and integrity, men who regard public office 
as a public trust worthy the service of their high¬ 
est manhood, rather than with those whose eye is 
single to the largest amount of loot and graft that 
comes within the range of their vision and the reach 
of their hand. Such a system would in time spell 
the end of Tammany Hall—a Democratic organiza¬ 
tion in New York City, whose chief object is to 
make politics a cover to divert the largest possible 
sums of money from the people of the City of New 
York to line the pockets, and in great abundance, 
of those in control of the body of loot. It would 


As to the Quality of our Education 109 

in time spell the end of the Republican rings and 
Halls whose object and purpose is identically the 
same in every city where they have been able to 
gain control, as well as the Democratic rings in 
cities other than New York. The methods of the 
rings of the one are equally black with the methods 
of the rings of the other; where the motives are 
the same the resultant action is the same. 

Our educational methods are developing. In edu¬ 
cational work are some of our noblest, our fore¬ 
most men and women. There is an element of the 
practical, the useful, that is now sort of remodelling 
our earlier methods. It has always seemed to me 
that not only in our public schools but in our col¬ 
leges and universities, it is possible to get as great 
a degree of training from branches that are in them¬ 
selves useful, that will be of actual use later on, 
as out of those that are used for their training value 
only. The element of the useful, not at the expense 
of the training, but combined with it, should be, 
I think, and is coming to be, the marked feature of 
our developing educational methods. 

The bread and butter problem will be the prob¬ 
lem of practically all in our common or public 
schools to-day. There probably will not be one in 
a thousand whose problem it will not be. To make 
our educational systems so that they will be of the 
greatest practical aid to all as they enter upon life’s 
activities should, it seems to me, be one of our great¬ 
est aims. That our college courses can be improved 


no This Mystical Life of Ours 

to at least from twenty to forty per cent along this 
same line I am fully persuaded, in addition to the 
saving of considerable valuable time for those who, 
contemplating professional careers, will afterwards 
have to spend a considerable period in years in 
professional schools. 

When we consider that not more than one-tenth 
of one per cent of those in our common schools ever 
get as far as the college or university, we can see 
how important it is that every child be guaranteed 
what the law of the most ordinary justice demands, 
that he or she have the benefit at least of what will 
enable him or her to enter upon the stage of young 
manhood and young womanhood free from the 
tremendous handicaps with which so many are en¬ 
tering upon it to-day. 


In the Fire of the Heart. 


XXXIII. 


A NEW ORDER OF PATRIOTISM. 

A new order of patriotism is coming into being 
and among us. What was at one time confined to 
the few brave, independent, advanced men, is now 
becoming common among the people. We are find¬ 
ing that the elements of justice and righteousness, 
fraternity and godliness, have a very direct relation 
to, or rather, that patriotism has a very direct re¬ 
lation to them. War—war and the flag, were at one 
time supposed to be the only agents with which 
patriotism was linked. To hurrah for the flag and 
to be eager to go to the front, when the war bugles 
sounded, or were likely to sound, was for a long 
period a prevailing idea of patriotism. It may still 
be a way in which patriotism may be manifested. 

The people are learning the real cause of many 
wars, indeed the great majority of them—the bull- 
headedness or pig-headedness, the incapacity on the 
part of those having to do with affairs; and again, 
the throwing of an entire nation into war by large 
and powerful though unscrupulous financial inter¬ 
ests solely for gain. These two agents are responsi¬ 
ble for the great bulk, indeed for nine out of every 
ten, of all modern wars, even as they have been 
for all time past. Men are beginning to realize that 


112 This Mystical Life of Ours 

instead of having anything to do with this type of 
war, patriotism lies in refusing absolutely to aid or 
abet it and in using one’s influence in a similar way 
among one’s neighbours more blunt and with less 
power of discernment. When we reach a point 
where the large body of citizens see to it that these 
men and their agents—for the large financial in¬ 
terests of the unscrupulous type almost invariably 
work through agents many of whom they place or 
have the people place in public* positions—when, I 
repeat, th£ larger body of citizens see to it that 
these men and their agents are kept out of public 
office and relegate them to the subordinate place 
where they rightly belong, then we will witness the 
full birth of an entirely new and a higher order of 
patriotism that is soon to be dominant among us. 

The highest patriotism that I know is that which 
impels a man to be honest, kind, hence thoughtful 
in all his business relations and in his daily life; 
that impels him to the primary and to give attention 
to those features of our political institutions that 
are of even greater consequence than his casting 
his vote on election day; that impels him to think 
and to be discriminating in his thought; that en¬ 
ables him to be not afraid to point out and denounce 
the pure self-seeker and his demagogic ways, be 
he in public life, in the ranks of high standing finan¬ 
ciers, or in the ranks of organized labour, or in 
the ranks of the common life. 

It is this patriotism in the common life that is 


A New Order of Patriotism 113 

of the high quality. Men who are industrious and 
honest in their work; who are faithful to whatever 
tasks are imposed upon them; who are as eager to 
give justice as to demand it; who are working in¬ 
dustriously and intelligently in order to take care 
of themselves and those dependent upon them, and 
thus remain self-supporting members of the com¬ 
munity; who remain brave and sweet in their na¬ 
tures and who abide always in faith in face of the 
hard or uncertain times that come at some time or 
another and in some form or another into the lives 
of everyone of us; who are jealous of their coun¬ 
try’s honour, and of the administration of its in¬ 
ternal affairs, for in the life of the nation as in the 
life of the individual, all life is from within out, 
and as is the inner so always will be the outer. 
These, I repeat, are the men and these are the con¬ 
ditions that are giving birth to that new and that 
higher order of patriotism that is now coming 
among us, and that is to take captive the hearts of 
men. 

That wars in the past have been, and even at the 
present time are too frequent, all thinking men and 
women are agreed. That they are in the great ma¬ 
jority of cases entirely inexcusable, and that there 
is and should be very little use for military forces 
if any, outside of purposes of defence, the highest 
and most intelligent portion of our citizenship 
thoroughly believes. And so far as effectiveness is 
concerned it has been proven time and again, that 


114 This Mystical Life of Ours 

a citizen soldiery is the finest in the world. Neither 
vast bodies of men drawn off from creative and pro¬ 
ductive enterprises and made into a professional 
soldier class, nor bodies of hirelings, but men who 
are citizens of intelligence and training, and who 
stand with the ear ready for the call to arms when 
there is just cause for their hearing this call, such 
are the intelligent, such are the brave and the dar¬ 
ing, such are the most effective. Men will not fight 
effectively for the little price in money they are 
paid. They will not fight effectively for the glory 
of another, nor will they fight effectively for a mere 
tract of land. But where homes are and institu¬ 
tions that they love and revere and care for, then 
men will fight with all that triumphant intelligence 
and all that indomitable daring that it is possible 
to call forth. With a citizen soldiery ready at the 
just moment to come from the mine, the mill, the 
counting-house, the farm, thousands of thousands 
or millions strong, why should there be a vast pro¬ 
fessional soldiery, a* great non-producing class kept 
primarily for the glory and to do the bidding of a 
ruling class, but supported almost entirely by the 
great common people, that is true of the foolhardy 
military systems of various European countries 
to-day ? 

So far then as the soldiery of a nation is con¬ 
cerned, let the interests of all the people be equally 
taken care of, let there be institutions founded upon 
justice, upon equal opportunities for all and special 


A New Order of Patriotism 115 

privileges for no man, let there be homes and senti¬ 
ment encircling these homes, and the keeping up 
of a large military system becomes but a fool’s 
dream. There will come from such a people a citi¬ 
zen soldiery more intelligent, more brave and de¬ 
termined, and therefore more effective, than can 
ever come from any professional fighting class, and 
at a cost not a hundredth part as great. 

Take sentiment from the battle-field and you take 
its chief source of heroism away. The people of 
homes and of just institutions are a people of senti¬ 
ment. Upon every cartridge-box and upon every 
rifle and upon every field piece of such a soldiery 
the word “ Invincible ” could most rightly be 
stamped. 


In the Fire of the Heart. 


XXXIV. 


MEN OF EXCEPTIONAL EXECUTIVE AND 
FINANCIAL ABILITY. 

The great nation is, again, the nation in which 
the man of great natural executive or financial abil¬ 
ity finds contentment in a smaller amount of pos¬ 
sessions for himself, and the larger contentment and 
satisfaction and joy in using that unusual ability 
in the service of, for the benefit of, his city, his 
state, the nation. The wonder is that more are not 
doing this already. What an influence a few such 
men could have, what results they could accomplish, 
what real riches they could bring into their lives 
through the riches they would bring into the lives 
of multitudes—What gratitude would go to them! 

As men continue to see the small satisfaction there 
is in the possession of great ability of this nature, 
and in the possession of great wealth when di¬ 
vorced from an adequate or even from an abundant 
connection with the interests and the welfare of 
their fellow-men, and as they catch the undying 
truth of the great law of life as enunciated by One 
who though He had not even where to lay His 
head was greater than them all—He that is great¬ 
est among you shall be your servant—then they 
in company with all men will be the gainers. Think 


Executive and Financial Ability 117 

what could be accomplished in the nation along the 
lines we have been considering in this little volume 
by a company of such men devoted to such ends. 
A change is coming and very rapidly. The time has 
already arrived when we will no longer look upon 
the possession of mere wealth or the ability to get 
it as deserving of any special distinction, and es¬ 
pecially when the means adopted in its acquirement 
are other than those of absolute honour and recti¬ 
tude. 

How significant are the following observations 
from the Outlook: 

“Those who have fallen most completely under the spell 
of fortune-hunting, and have been consumed by the fever 
of a pursuit which dries up the very sources of spiritual life, 
can no longer be blind to the fact that when great wealth 
ceases to be associated with character, honour, genius, or 
public respect, it is a very shabby substitute for the thing 
men once held it to be. There are hosts of honourable men 
of wealth, and there are large fortunes which have been 
honourably made; but so much brutal indifference to the 
rights of others, so much tyrannical use of power, so much 
arbitrary employment of privilege without a touch of 
genius, so much cynical indifference to human ties of all 
kinds, so much vulgar greed, have come to light, . . . that 
the lustre has very largely gone and wealth, as a supreme 
prize of life, has immensely lost in attractive power. There 
are hosts of young men who are ambitious to be rich, but 
who are not willing to accept wealth on such terms; the 
price is too great, the bargain too hard.” 

Men of exceptional executive and financial abil¬ 
ity, raise yourselves to the standing-point of real 
greatness and use these abilities to noble purposes 


118 This Mystical Life of Ours 

and to undying ends instead of piling a heap of 
things together that you’ll soon have to leave and 
that may do those to whom it will go more harm 
than good. The times are changing, mankind is 
advancing and ascending to higher standing places, 
and it will be but a short time when your position 
if maintained as at present will be a very ordinary 
one or even a very low one in the public esteem— 
and so will be your memories. 

The Bishop of Exeter voices a well-nigh universal 
human cry at present when he says: 

Give us men! 

Strong and stalwart ones: 

Men whom highest hope inspires, 

Men whom purest honour fires, 

Men who trample Self beneath them, 

Men who make their country wreathe them 
As her noble sons, 

Worthy of their sires, 

Men who never shame their mothers, 

Men who never fail their brothers, 

True, however false are others: 

Give us Men—I say again, 

Give us Men! 

In the Fire of the Heart. 


XXXV. 


AN EXAMPLE—A VERY YOUNG OLD 
LADY. 

A close observer, a careful student of the power 
of the thought forces, will soon be able to read in 
the voice, in the movements, in the features, the 
effects registered by the prevailing mental states 
and conditions. Or, if he is told the prevailing men¬ 
tal states and conditions, he can describe the voice, 
the movements, the features, as well as describe, in 
a general way, the peculiar physical ailments their 
possessor is heir to. 

There comes to mind at this moment a friend, a 
lady well on to eighty years of age. An old lady, 
some, most people in fact, would call her, especially 
those who measure age by the number of the sea¬ 
sons that have come and gone since one’s birth. 
But to call our friend old, would be to call black 
white. She is no older than a girl of twenty-five, 
and indeed younger, I am glad to say, or I am 
sorry to say, depending upon the point of view, 
than many a girl of this age. Seeking for the good 
in all people and in all things, she has found the 
good everywhere. The brightness of disposition 
and of voice that is hers to-day, that attracts all 
people to her and that makes her so beautifully 


120 This Mystical Life of Ours 

attractive to all people, has characterized her all 
through life. It has in turn carried brightness and 
hope and courage and strength to hundreds and 
thousands of people through all these years, and 
will continue to do so, apparently, for many years 
yet to come. 

No fears, no worryings, no hatreds, no jealousies, 
no sorrowings, no grievings, no sordid graspings 
after inordinate gain, have found entrance into her 
realm of thought. As a consequence her mind, free 
from these abnormal states and conditions, has not 
externalized in her body the various physical ail¬ 
ments that the great majority of people are lugging 
about with them, thinking in their ignorance, that 
they are natural, and that it is all in accordance 
with the “ eternal order of things ” that they should 
have them. Her life has been one of varied experi¬ 
ences, so that all these things would have found 
ready entrance into the realm of her mind and so 
into her life were she ignorant enough to allow 
them entrance. On the contrary she has been wise 
enough to recognize the fact that in one kingdom 
at least she is ruler,—the kingdom of her mind, and 
that it is hers to dictate as to what shall and what 
shall not enter there. She knows, moreover, that in 
determining this she is determining all the condi¬ 
tions of her life. It is indeed a pleasure as well as 
an inspiration to see her as she goes here and there, 
to see her sunny disposition, her youthful step, to 
hear her joyous laughter. Indeed and in truth, 


An Example—A Very Young Old Lady 121 

Shakespeare knew whereof he spoke when he said, 
—“ It is the mind that makes the body rich.” 

With great pleasure I watched her but recently 
as she was walking along the street, stopping to have 
a word and so a part in the lives of a group of 
children at play by the wayside, hastening her step 
a little to have a word with a washerwoman toting 
her bundle of clothes, stopping for a word with a 
laboring man returning with dinner pail in hand 
from his work, returning the recognition from the 
lady in her carriage, and so imparting some of her 
own rich life to all with whom she came in contact. 

And as good fortune would have it, while still 
watching her, an old lady passed her,—really old, 
this one, though at least ten or fifteen years younger, 
so far as the count by the seasons is concerned. 
Nevertheless she was bent in form and apparently 
stiff in joint and muscle. Silent in mood, she wore 
a countenance of long-faced sadness, which was in¬ 
tensified surely several fold by a black, sombre head- 
gear with an immense heavy veil still more sombre 
looking if possible. Her entire dress was of this 
description. By this relic-of-barbarism garb, com¬ 
bined with her own mood and expression, she con¬ 
tinually proclaimed to the world two things,—her 
own personal sorrows and woes, which by this very 
method she kept continually fresh in her mind, and 
also her lack of faith in the eternal goodness of 
things, her lack of faith in the love and eternal 
goodness of the Infinite Father. 


122 This Mystical Life of Ours 

Wrapped only in the thoughts of her own ail¬ 
ments, and sorrows, and woes, she received and she 
gave nothing of joy, nothing of hope, nothing of 
courage, nothing of value to those whom she passed 
or with whom she came in contact. But on the 
contrary she suggested to all and helped to intensify 
in many, those mental states all too prevalent in 
our common human life. And as she passed our 
friend one could notice a slight turn of the head 
which, coupled with the expression in her face, 
seemed to indicate this as her thought,—Your dress 
and your conduct are not wholly in keeping with 
a lady of your years. Thank God, then, thank God 
they are not. And may He in His great goodness 
and love send us an innumerable company of the 
same rare type; and may they live a thousand years 
to bless mankind, to impart the life-giving influ¬ 
ences of their own royal lives to the numerous ones 
all about us who stand so much in need of them. 

In Time with the Infinite. 


XXXVI. 


HOW MIND BUILDS BODY. 

Would you remain always young, and would 
you carry all the joyousness and buoyancy of youth 
into your maturer years ? Then have care concern¬ 
ing but one thing,—how you live in your thought 
world. This will determine all. It was the inspired 
one, Gautama, the Buddha, who said,—“ The mind 
is everything; what you think you become.” And 
the same thing had Ruskin in mind when he said,— 
“ Make yourself nests of pleasant thoughts. None 
of us as yet know, for none of us have been taught 
in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build of 
beautiful thought ,—proof against all adversity” 
And would you have in your body all the elasticity, 
all the strength, all the beauty of your younger 
years? Then live these in your mind, making no 
room for unclean thought, and you will externalize 
them in your body. In the degree that you keep 
young in thought will you remain young in body. 
And you will find that your body will in turn aid 
your mind, for body helps mind the same as mind 
builds body. 

You are continually building, and so externaliz¬ 
ing in your body conditions most akin to the 
thoughts and emotions you entertain. And not only 


124 This Mystical Life of Ours 

are you so building from within, but you are also 
continually drawing from without, forces of a kin¬ 
dred nature. Your particular kind of thought con¬ 
nects you with a similar order of thought from with¬ 
out. If it is bright, hopeful, cheerful, you connect 
yourself with a current of thought of this nature. 
If it is sad, fearing, despondent, then this is the 
order of thought you connect yourself with. 

If the latter is the order of your thought, then 
perhaps unconsciously and by degrees you have been 
connecting yourself with it. You need to go back 
and pick up again a part of your child nature, with 
its careless and cheerful type of thought. 

Full, rich, and abounding health is the normal 
and the natural condition of life. Anything else 
is an abnormal condition, and abnormal conditions 
as a rule come through perversions. God never cre¬ 
ated sickness, suffering, and disease; they are man’s 
own creations. They come through his violating 
the laws under which he lives. So used are we to 
seeing them that we come gradually, if not to think 
of them as natural, then to look upon them as a 
matter of course. 

The time will come when the work of the phy¬ 
sician will not be to treat and attempt to heal the 
body, but to heal the mind, which in turn will heal 
the body. In other words, the true physician will 
be a teacher; his work will be to keep people well, 
instead of attempting to make them well after sick¬ 
ness and disease comes on; and still beyond this 


How Mind Builds Body 


125 


there will come a time when each will be his own 
physician. In the degree that we live in harmony 
with the higher laws of our being, and so, in the 
degree that we become better acquainted with the 
powers of the mind and spirit, will we give less 
attention to the body,—no less care, but less atten¬ 
tion. 

The bodies of thousands to-day would be much 
better cared for if their owners gave them less 
thought and attention. As a rule, those who think 
least of their bodies enjoy the best health. Many 
are kept in continual ill health by the abnormal 
thought and attention they give them. 

Give the body the nourishment, the exercise, the 
fresh air, the sunlight it requires, keep it clean, and 
then think of it as little as possible. In your 
thoughts and in your conversation never dwell upon 
the negative side. Don’t talk of sickness and dis¬ 
ease. By talking of these you do yourself harm 
and you do harm to those who listen to you. Talk 
of those things that will make people the better for 
listening to you. Thus you will infect them with 
health and strength and not with weakness and 
disease. 

“ Never affirm or repeat about your health what 
you do not wish to be true. Do not dwell upon your 
ailments, nor study your symptoms. Never allow 
yourself to be convinced that you are not complete 
master of yourself. Stoutly affirm your superiority 
over bodily ills, and do not acknowledge yourself 


126 This Mystical Life of Ours 

the slave of any inferior power. ... I would teach 
children early to build a strong barrier between 
themselves and disease, by healthy habits of thought, 
high thinking, and purity of life. I would teach 
them to expel all thoughts of death, all images of 
disease, all discordant emotions, like hatred, malice, 
revenge, envy, and sensuality, as they would ban¬ 
ish a temptation to do evil. I would teach them that 
bad food, bad drink, or bad air makes bad blood; 
that bad blood makes bad tissue, and bad flesh bad 
morals. I would teach them that healthy thoughts 
are as essential to healthy bodies as pure thoughts 
to a clean life. I would teach them to cultivate a 
strong will power, and to brace themselves against 
life’s enemies in every possible way. I would teach 
the sick to have hope, confidence, cheer. Our 
thoughts and imaginations are the only real limits 
to our possibilities. No man’s success or health 
will ever reach beyond his own confidence; as a 
rule, we erect our own barriers.” 

In Tune with the Infinite . 


XXXVII. 


SOUL RADIANCE. 

All the frictions, all the uncertainties, all the ills, 
the sufferings, the fears, the forebodings, the per¬ 
plexities of life come to us because we are out of 
harmony with the divine order of things. They 
will continue to come as long as we so live. Row¬ 
ing against the tide is hard and uncertain. To go 
with the tide and thus to take advantage of the 
working of a great natural force is safe and easy. 
To come into the conscious, vital realization of our 
oneness with the Infinite Life and Power is to come 
into the current of this divine sequence. Coming 
thus into harmony with the Infinite, brings us in 
turn into harmony with all about us, into harmony 
with the life of the heavens, into harmony with all 
the universe. And above all, it brings us into har¬ 
mony with ourselves, so that body, soul, and mind 
become perfectly harmonized, and when this is so, 
life becomes full and complete. 

The sense life then no longer masters and en¬ 
slaves us. The physical is subordinated to and 
ruled by the mental; this in turn is subordinated 
to and continually illumined by the spiritual. Life 
is then no longer the poor, onesided thing it is in so 
many cases; but the three-fold, the all-round life 


128 This Mystical Life of Ours 

with all its beauties and ever increasing joys and 
powers is entered upon. Thus it is that we are 
brought to realize that the middle path is the great 
solution of life; neither asceticism on the one hand 
nor license and perverted use on the other. Every¬ 
thing is for use, but all must be wisely used in order 
to be fully enjoyed. 

As we live in these higher realizations the senses 
are not ignored but are ever more fully perfected. 
As the body becomes less gross and heavy, finer in 
its texture and form, all the senses become finer, 
so that powers we do not now realize as belonging 
to us gradually develop. Thus we come, in a per¬ 
fectly natural and normal way, into the super-con¬ 
scious realms whereby we make it possible for the 
higher laws and truths to be revealed to us. As 
we enter into these realms we are then not among 
those who give their time to speculating as to 
whether this one or that one had the insight and the 
powers attributed to him, but we are able to know 
for ourselves. Neither are we among those who at¬ 
tempt to lead the people upon the hearsay of some 
one else, but we know whereof we speak, and only 
thus can we speak with authority. There are many 
things that we cannot know until by living the life 
we bring ourselves into that state where it is pos¬ 
sible for them to be revealed to us. “ If any man 
will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” It 
was Plotinus who said, The mind that wishes to 
behold God must itself become God. As we thus 


Soul Radiance 


129 


make it possible for these higher laws and truths 
to be revealed to us, we will in turn become en¬ 
lightened ones, channels through which they may be 
revealed to others. 

When one is fully alive to the possibilities that 
come with this higher awakening, as he goes here 
and there, as he mingles with his fellow-men, he 
imparts to all an inspiration that kindles in them a 
feeling of power kindred to his own. We are all 
continually giving out influences similar to those 
that are playing in our own lives. We do this in 
the same way that each flower emits its own peculiar 
odor. The rose breathes out its fragrance upon the 
air and all who come near it are refreshed and 
inspired by this emanation from the soul of the rose. 
A poisonous weed sends out its obnoxious odor; it 
is neither refreshing nor inspiring in its effects, and 
if one remain near it long he may be so unpleasantly 
affected as to be made even ill by it. 

The higher the life the more inspiring and help¬ 
ful are the emanations that it is continually sending 
out. The lower the life the more harmful is the 
influence it continually sends out to all who come 
in contact with it. Each one is continually radiat¬ 
ing an atmosphere of one kind or the other. 

We are told by the mariners who sail on the In¬ 
dian Seas, that many times they are able to tell their 
approach to certain islands long before they can 
see them by the sweet fragrance of the sandalwood 
that is wafted far out upon the deep. Do you not 


130 This Mystical Life of Ours 

see how it would serve to have such a soul playing 
through such a body that as you go here and there 
a subtle, silent force goes out from you that all 
feel and are influenced by; so that you carry with 
you an inspiration and continually shed a benedic¬ 
tion wherever you go; so that your friends and all 
people will say,—His coming brings peace and joy 
into our homes, welcome his coming; so that as you 
pass along the street, tired, and weary, and even sin- 
sick men and women will feel a certain divine 
touch that will awaken new desires and a new life 
in them; that will make the very horse as you pass 
him turn his head with a strange, half-human, long¬ 
ing look? Such are the subtle powers of the hu¬ 
man soul when it makes itself translucent to the 
Divine. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXXVIII. 


INTUITION: THE VOICE OF THE SOUL. 

The power of every life, the very life itself, is de¬ 
termined by what it relates itself to. God is imma¬ 
nent as well as transcendent. He is creating, work¬ 
ing, ruling in the universe today, in your life and 
in mine, just as much as He ever has been. We are 
too apt to regard Him after the manner of an ab¬ 
sentee landlord, one who has set in operation the 
forces of this great universe, and then taken Him¬ 
self away. 

In the degree, however, that we recognize Him 
as immanent as well as transcendent, are we able 
to partake of His life and power. For in the de¬ 
gree that we recognize Him as the Infinite Spirit 
of Life and Power that is today, at this very mo¬ 
ment, working and manifesting in and through all, 
and then, in the degree that we come into the 
realization of our oneness with this life, do we be¬ 
come partakers of, and so do we actualize in our¬ 
selves the qualities of His life. In the degree that 
we open ourselves to the inflowing tide of this im¬ 
manent and transcendent life, do we make ourselves 
channels through which the Infinite Intelligence 
and Power can work. 

It is through the instrumentality of the mind that 


i 3 2 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


we are enabled to connect the real soul life with 
the physical life, and so enable the soul life to man¬ 
ifest and work through the physical. The thought 
life needs continually to be illumined from within. 
This illumination can come in just the degree that 
through the agency of the mind we recognize our 
oneness with the Divine, of which each soul is an 
individual form of expression. 

This gives us the inner guiding which we call in¬ 
tuition. “ Intuition is to the spiritual nature and 
understanding practically what sense perception is 
to the sensuous nature and understanding. It is an 
inner spiritual sense through which man is opened 
to the direct revelation and knowledge of God, the 
secrets of nature and life, and through which he is 
brought into conscious unity and fellowship with 
God, and made to realize his own deific nature and 
supremacy of being as the son of God. ... It is, 
we repeat, a spiritual sense opening inwardly, as the 
physical senses open outwardly; and because it 
has the capacity to perceive, grasp, and know the 
truth at first hand, independent of all external 
sources of information, we call it intuition. All in¬ 
spired teaching and spiritual revelations are based 
upon the recognition of this spiritual faculty of the 
soul, and its power to receive and appropriate them.” 

Some call it the voice of the soul; some call it 
the voice of God; some call it the sixth sense. It 
is our inner spiritual sense. 

In the degree that we come into the recognition 


Intuition : The Voice of the Soul 


133 


of our own true selves, into the realization of the 
oneness of our life with the Infinite Life, and in the 
degree that we open ourselves to this divine inflow, 
does this voice of intuition, this voice of the soul, 
this voice of God, speak clearly; and in the degree 
that we recognize, listen to, and obey it, does it 
speak ever more clearly, until by-and-by there 
comes the time when it is unerring, absolutely un¬ 
erring, in its guidance. 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XXXIX. 


MIRACLES AND THE HIGHER LIFE. 

The most powerful agent in character-building is 
this awakening to the true self, to the fact that man 
is a spiritual being,—nay, more, that I, this very 
eternal I, am a spiritual being, right here and now, 
at this very moment, with the God-powers which 
can be quickly called forth. With this awakening, 
life in all its manifold relations becomes wonder¬ 
fully simplified. And as to the powers, the full 
realization of the fact that man is a spiritual being 
and a living as such brings, they are absolutely 
without limit, increasing in direct proportion as the 
higher self, the God-self, assumes the mastery, and 
so as this higher spiritualization of life goes on. 

With this awakening and realization one is 
brought at once en rapport with the universe. He 
feels the power and the thrill of the life universal. 
He goes out from his own little garden spot, and 
mingles with the great universe; and the little per¬ 
plexities, trials, and difficulties of life that to-day 
so vex and annoy him, fall away of their own ac¬ 
cord by reason of their very insignificance. The in¬ 
tuitions become keener and ever more keen and un¬ 
erring in their guidance. There comes more and 
more the power of reading men, so that no harm 


Miracles and the Higher Life 135 

can come from this source. There comes more and 
more the power of seeing into the future, so that 
more and more true becomes the old adage,—that 
coming events cast their shadows before. Health 
in time takes the place of disease; for all disease 
and its consequent suffering is merely the result 
of the violation of law, either consciously or un¬ 
consciously, either intentionally or unintentionally. 
There comes also a spiritual power which, as it is 
sent out, is adequate for the healing of others the 
same as in the days of old. The body becomes less 
gross and heavy, finer in its texture and form, so 
that it serves far better and responds far more 
readily to the higher impulses of the soul. Matter 
itself in time responds to the action of these higher 
forces; and many things that we are accustomed 
by reason of our limited vision to call miraculous 
or supernatural become the normal, the natural, the 
every-day. 

For what, let us ask, is a miracle? Nothing more 
nor less than this: a highly illumined soul, one who 
has brought his life into thorough harmony with 
the higher spiritual laws and forces of his being, 
and therefore with those of the universe, thus mak¬ 
ing it possible for the highest things to come to him, 
has brought to him a law a little higher than the 
ordinary mind knows of as yet. This he touches, he 
operates. It responds. The people see the result, 
and cry out, Miracle! miracle! when it is just as 
natural, just as fully in accordance with the law 


136 This Mystical Life of Ours 

on this higher plane, as is the common, the every¬ 
day on the ordinary. And let it be remembered that 
the miraculous, the supernatural of to-day becomes, 
as in the process of evolution we leave the lower for 
the higher, the common-place, the natural, the 
every-day of to-morrow; and, truly, miracles are 
being performed in the world to-day just as much 
as they ever have been. 

The Master never claimed for himself anything 
that he did not claim for all mankind; but, quite 
to the contrary, he said and continually repeated, 
Not only shall ye do these things, but greater than 
these shall ye do; for I have pointed out to you the 
way,—meaning, though strange as it evidently 
seems to many, exactly what he said. 

What All the World's A-Seeking. 


XL. 


THE VOICE OF THE HIGHER SELF. 

Great should be the joy that God’s boundless 
truth is open to all, open equally to all, and that it 
will make each one its dwelling place in proportion 
as he earnestly desires it and opens himself to it. 

And in regard to the wisdom that guides us in 
our daily life, there is nothing that it is right and 
well for us to know that may not be known when 
we recognize the law of its coming, and are able 
wisely to use it. Let us know that all things are 
ours as soon as we know how to appropriate them. 

“I hold it as a changeless law, 

From which no soul can sway or swerve, 

We have that in us which will draw 
Whate’er we need or most deserve.” 

If the times come when we know not what course 
to pursue, when we know not which way to turn, 
the fault lies in ourselves. If the fault lies in our¬ 
selves then the correction of this unnatural condi¬ 
tion lies also in ourselves. It is never necessary 
to come into such a state if we are awake and re¬ 
main awake to the light and the powers within us. 
The light is ever shining, and the only thing that 
it is necessary for us diligently to see to is that we 
permit neither this thing nor that to come between 


138 This Mystical Life of Ours 

us and the light. “ With Thee is the fountain of 
life; in Thy light shall we see light.” 

Let us hear the words of one of the most highly 
illumined men I have ever known, and one who as 
a consequence is never in the dark, when the time 
comes, as to what to do and how to do it. “ When¬ 
ever you are in doubt as to the course you should 
pursue, after you have turned to every outward 
means of guidance, let the inward eye see, let the 
inward ear hear, and allow this simple, natural, 
beautiful process to go on unimpeded by question¬ 
ings or doubts. ... In all dark hours and times 
of unwonted perplexity we need to follow one 
simple direction, found, as all needed directions can 
be found, in the dear old gospel, which so many 
read, but alas, so few interpret. * Enter into thine 
inner chamber and shut the door.’ Does this mean 
that we must literally betake ourselves to a private 
closet with a key in the door? If it did, then the 
command could never be obeyed in the open air, 
on land or sea, and the Christ loved the lakes and 
the forests far better than the cramping rooms of 
city dwelling houses; still his counsels are so wide- 
reaching that there is no spot on earth and no con¬ 
ceivable situation in which any of us may be placed 
where we cannot follow them. 

“ One of the most intuitive men we ever met 
had a desk in a city office where several other gen¬ 
tlemen were doing business constantly and often 
talking loudly. Entirely undisturbed by the many 


The Voice of the Higher Self 139 

various sounds about him, this self-centred, faith¬ 
ful man would, in any moment of perplexity', draw 
the curtains of privacy so completely about him 
that he would be as fully enclosed in his own psychic 
aura, and thereby as effectually removed from all 
distractions as though he were alone in some pri¬ 
meval wood. Taking his difficulty with him into 
the mystic silence in the form of a direct question, 
to which he expected a certain answer, he would 
remain utterly passive until the reply came, and 
never once through many years’ experience did he 
find himself disappointed or misled. Intuitive per¬ 
ceptions of truth are the daily bread to satisfy our 
daily hunger; they come like the manna in the 
desert day by day; each day brings adequate sup¬ 
ply for that day’s need only. They must be fol¬ 
lowed instantly, for dalliance with them means 
their obscuration. 

“ One condition is imposed by universal law, and 
this we must obey. Put all wishes aside save the 
one desire to know truth; couple with this one de¬ 
mand the fully consecrated determination to follow 
what is distinctly perceived as truth immediately 
it is revealed. No other affection must be permitted 
to share the field with this all-absorbing love of 
truth for its own sake. Obey this one direction and 
never forget that expectation and desire are bride 
and bridegroom and forever inseparable, and you 
will soon find your hitherto darkened way grow 
luminous with celestial radiance, for with the 


140 This Mystical Life of Ours 

heaven within, all heavens without incessantly co¬ 
operate.” This may be termed going into the “ si¬ 
lence.” This it is to perceive and to be guided by 
the light that lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world. This it is to listen to and be guided by 
the voice of your own soul, the voice of your higher 
self. 


In Tune with the Infinite . 


XLI. 


THE SOUL MUST BE MADE TRANSLU¬ 
CENT TO THE DIVINE. 

The soul is divine and in allowing it to become 
translucent to the Infinite Spirit it reveals all things 
to us. As man turns away from the Divine Light 
do all things become hidden. There is nothing hid¬ 
den of itself. When the spiritual sense is opened, 
then it transcends all the limitations of the physical 
senses and the intellect. And in the degree that we 
are able to get away from the limitations set by 
them, and realize that so far as the real life is con¬ 
cerned it is one with the Infinite Life, then we begin 
to reach the place where this voice will always 
speak, where it will never fail us, if we follow it, 
and as a consequence where we will always have 
the divine illumination and guidance. To know 
this and to live in this realization is not to live in 
heaven hereafter, but to live in heaven here and 
now, to-day and every day. 

No human soul need be without it. When we 
turn our face in the right direction it comes as 
simply and as naturally as the flower blooms and 
the winds blow. It is not to be bought with money 
or with price. It is a condition waiting simply to be 


142 This Mystical Life of Ours 

realized, by rich and by poor, by king and by peas¬ 
ant, by master and by servant the world over. All 
are equal heirs to it. And so the peasant, if he find 
it first, lives a life far transcending in beauty and in 
real power the life of his king. The servant, if he 
find it first, lives a life surpassing the life of his 
master. 

If you would find the highest, the fullest, and the 
richest life that not only this world but that any 
world can know, then do away with the sense of 
the separateness of your life from the life of God. 
Hold to the thought of your oneness. In the de¬ 
gree that you do this you will find yourself realiz¬ 
ing it more and more, and as this life of realization 
is lived, you will find that no good thing will be 
withheld, for all things are included in this. Then 
it will be yours, without fears or forebodings, sim¬ 
ply to do today what your hands find to do, and so 
be ready for tomorrow, when it comes , knowing 
that tomorrow will bring tomorrow’s supplies for 
the mental, the spiritual, and the physical life. Re¬ 
member, however, that tomorrow’s supplies are not 
needed until tomorrow comes. 

If one is willing to trust himself fully to the Law, 
the Law will never fail him. It is the half-hearted 
trusting to it that brings uncertain, and so, un¬ 
satisfactory results. Nothing is firmer and surer 
than Deity. It will never fail the one who throws 
himself wholly upon it. The secret of life then, is 


Soul Translucent to the Divine 143 

to live continually in this realization, whatever one 
may be doing, wherever one may be, by day and by 
night, both waking and sleeping. It can be lived 
in while we are sleeping no less than when we are 
awake. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


XLII. 


RECEIVING INSTRUCTION DURING 
SLEEP. 

During the process of sleep it is merely the physi¬ 
cal body that is at rest and in quiet; the soul life 
with all its activities goes right on. Sleep is na¬ 
ture’s provision for the recuperation of the body, for 
the rebuilding and hence the replacing of the waste 
that is continually going on during the waking hours. 
It is nature’s great restorer. If sufficient sleep 
is not allowed the body, so that the rebuilding may 
equalize the wasting process, the body is gradually 
depleted and weakened, and any ailment or malady, 
when it is in this condition, is able to find a more 
ready entrance. It is for this reason that those 
who are subject to it will take a cold, as we term 
it, more readily when the body is tired or exhausted 
through loss of sleep than at most any other time. 
The body is in that condition where outside influ¬ 
ences can have a more ready effect upon it, than 
when it is in its normal condition. And when they 
do have an effect they always go to the weaker por¬ 
tions first. 

Our bodies are given us to serve far higher pur¬ 
poses than we ordinarily use them for. Especially 
is this true in the numerous cases where the body is 


Receiving Instruction during Sleep 145 

master of its owner. In the degree that we come 
into the realization of the higher powers of the mind 
and spirit, in that degree does the body, through 
their influence upon it, become less gross and heavy, 
finer in its texture and form. And then, because 
the mind finds a kingdom of enjoyment in itself, 
and in all the higher things it becomes related to, 
excesses in eating and drinking, as well as all 
others, naturally and of their own accord fall away. 
There also falls away the desire for the heavier, 
grosser, less valuable kinds of food and drink, such 
as the flesh of animals, alcoholic drinks, and all 
things of the class that stimulate the body and the 
passions rather than build the body and the brain 
into a strong, clean, well-nourished, enduring, and 
fibrous condition. In the degree that the body thus 
becomes less gross and heavy, finer in its texture 
and form, is there less waste, and what there is is 
more easily replaced, so that it keeps in a more reg¬ 
ular and even condition. When this is true, less 
sleep is actually required. And even the amount 
that is taken does more for a body of this finer 
type than it can do for one of the other nature. 

As the body in this way grows finer, in other 
words, as the process of its evolution is thus accel¬ 
erated, it in turn helps the mind and the soul in the 
realization of ever higher perceptions, and thus 
body helps mind the same as mind builds body. It 
was undoubtedly this fact that Browning had in 
mind when he said: 


146 This Mystical Life of Ours 

“Let us cry ‘All good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh, more now, 

Than flesh helps soul.’” 

Sleep, then, is for the resting and the rebuilding 
of the body. The soul needs no rest, and while 
the body is at rest in sleep the soul life is active 
the same as when the body is in activity. 

There are some, having a deep insight into the 
soul’s activities, who say that we travel when we 
sleep. Some are able to recall and bring over into 
the conscious, waking life the scenes visited, the 
information gained, and the events that have tran¬ 
spired. Most people are not able to do this and so 
much that might otherwise be gained is lost. They 
say, however, that it is in our power, in propor¬ 
tion as we understand the laws, to go where we 
will, and to bring over into the conscious, waking 
life all the experiences thus gained. Be this, how¬ 
ever, as it may, it certainly is true that while sleep¬ 
ing we have the power, in a perfectly normal and 
natural way, to get much of value by way of light, 
instruction, and growth that the majority of people 
now miss. 

If the soul life, that which relates us to Infinite 
Spirit, is always active, even while the body is at 
rest, why may not the mind so direct conditions as 
one falls asleep, that while the body is at rest, it may 
continually receive illumination from the soul and 
bring what it thus receives over into the conscious, 
waking life ? This, indeed, can be done, and is done 


Receiving Instruction during Sleep 147 

by some to great advantage; and many times the 
highest inspirations from the soul come in this way, 
as would seem most natural, since at this time all 
communications from the outer, material world no 
longer enter. By charging the mind on going to 
sleep as to a particular time for waking, it is pos¬ 
sible, as many of us know, to wake on the very 
minute. 

The mind acting intently along a particular line 
will continue so to act until some other object of 
thought carries it along another line. And since 
in sleep only the body is in quiet while the mind 
and soul are active, then the mind on being given 
a certain direction when one drops off to sleep, will 
take up the line along which it is directed, and can 
be made, in time, to bring over into consciousness 
the results of its activities. Some will be able very 
soon to get results of this kind; for some it will 
take longer. Quiet and continued effort will in¬ 
crease the faculty. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


XLIII. 


THE JOSEPH TYPE BOTH DREAMS AND 
INTERPRETS. 

Then by virtue of the law of the drawing power 
of mind, since the mind is always active, we are 
drawing to us even while sleeping, influences from 
the realms kindred to those in which we in our 
thoughts are living before we fall asleep. In this 
way we can put ourselves into relation with what¬ 
ever kinds of influence we choose and accordingly 
gain much during the process of sleep. In many 
ways the interior faculties are more open and re¬ 
ceptive while we are in sleep than while we are 
awake. Hence the necessity of exercising even 
greater care as to the nature of the thoughts that 
occupy the mind as we enter into sleep, for there 
can come to us only what we by our own order of 
thought attract. We have it entirely in our own 
hands. 

And for the same reason,—this greater degree of 
receptivity during this period,—we are able by un¬ 
derstanding and using the law, to gain much of 
value more readily in this way than when the physi¬ 
cal senses are fully open to the material world about 
us. Many will find a practice somewhat after the 
following nature of value: When light or informa- 


Joseph Type both Dreams and Interprets 149 

tion is desired along any particular line, light or 
information you feel it is right and wise for you 
to have, as, for example, light in regard to an un¬ 
certain course of action, then as you retire, first 
bring your mind into the attitude of peace and good¬ 
will for all. You in this way bring yourself into an 
harmonious condition, and in turn attract to your¬ 
self these same peaceful conditions from without. 

Then resting in this sense of peace, quietly and 
calmly send out your earnest desire for the needed 
light or information; cast out of your mind all fears 
or forebodings lest it come not, for “ in quietness 
and in confidence shall be your strength.” Take 
the expectant attitude of mind, firmly believing and 
expecting that when you awake the desired results 
will be with you. Then on awaking, before any 
thoughts or activities from the outside world come 
in to absorb the attention, remain for a little while 
receptive to the intuitions or the impressions that 
come. When they come, when they manifest them¬ 
selves clearly, then act upon them without delay. 
In the degree that you do this, in that degree will 
the power of doing it ever more effectively grow. 

Or, if for unselfish purposes you desire to grow 
and develop any of your faculties, or to increase 
the health and strength of your body, take a cor¬ 
responding attitude of mind, the form of which will 
readily suggest itself in accordance with your par¬ 
ticular needs or desires. In this way you will open 
yourself to, you will connect yourself with, and 


150 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


you will set into operation within yourself, the par¬ 
ticular order of forces that will make for these re¬ 
sults. Don’t be afraid to voice your desires. In 
this way you set into operation vibratory forces 
which go out and which make their impress felt 
somewhere, and which, arousing into activity or 
uniting with other forces, set about to actualize 
your desires. No good thing shall be withheld from 
him who lives in harmony with the higher laws and 
forces. There are no desires that shall not be sat¬ 
isfied to the one who knows and who wisely uses 
the powers with which he or she is endowed. 

Your sleep will be more quiet, and peaceful, and 
refreshing, and so your power increased mentally, 
physically, and spiritually, simply by sending out 
as you fall asleep, thoughts of love and good-will, 
thoughts of peace and harmony for all. In this 
way you are connecting yourself with all the forces 
in the universe that make for peace and harmony. 

Visions and inspirations of the highest order will 
come in the degree that we make for them the right 
conditions. One who has studied deeply into the 
subject in hand has said: “ To receive education 
spiritually while the body is resting in sleep is a 
perfectly normal and orderly experience, and would 
occur definitely and satisfactorily in the lives of all 
of us, if we paid more attention to internal and con¬ 
sequently less to external states with their supposed 
but unreal necessities. . . . Our thoughts make us 
what we are here and hereafter, and our thoughts 


Joseph Type both Dreams and Interprets 151 

are often busier by night than by day, for when we 
are asleep to the exterior we can be wide awake to 
the interior world; and the unseen world is a sub¬ 
stantial place, the conditions of which are entirely 
regulated by mental and moral attainments. When 
we are not deriving information through outward 
avenues of sensation, we are receiving instruction 
through interior channels of perception, and when 
this fact is understood for what it is worth, it will 
become a universal custom for persons to take to 
sleep with them the special subject on which they 
most earnestly desire particular instruction. The 
Pharaoh type of person dreams, and so does his 
butler and baker; but the Joseph type, which is that 
of the truly gifted seer, both dreams and interprets/' 
In Tune with the Infinite. 


XLIV. 


HEART TRAINING THROUGH THE 
ANIMAL WORLD. 

It is an established fact that the training of the 
intellect alone is not sufficient. Nothing in this 
world can be truer than that the education of the 
head, without the training of the heart, simply in¬ 
creases one’s power for evil, while the education 
of the heart, along with the head, increases one’s 
power for good, and this, indeed, is the true 
education. 

Clearly we must begin with the child. The les¬ 
sons learned in childhood are the last to be 
forgotten. Let it be taught that the lower ani¬ 
mals are God’s creatures, as it itself is, put here 
by a common Heavenly Father, each for its 
own special purpose, and that they have the same 
right to life and protection. Let it be taught that 
principle recognised by all noble-hearted men, that 
it is only a depraved, debased, and cowardly na¬ 
ture that will injure an inferior, defenceless crea¬ 
ture, simply because it is in its power to do so, and 
that there is no better, no grander test of true 
bravery and nobility of character than one’s treat¬ 
ment of the lower animals. I cannot refrain in 
this connection from quoting a sentence or two 


Training Through the Animal World 153 

from Archdeacon Farrar which have recently come 
to my notice: 

“ Not once or twice only, at the seaside, have I 
.come across a sad and disgraceful sight—a sight 
which haunts me still—a number of harmless sea¬ 
birds lying defaced and dead upon the sand, their 
white plumage red with blood, as they had been 
tossed there, dead or half-dead, their torture and 
massacre having furnished a day’s amusement to 
heartless and senseless men. Amusement! I say 
execrable amusement! All killing for mere kill¬ 
ing’s sake is execrable amusement. Can you imag¬ 
ine the stupid callousness, the utter insensibility to 
mercy and beauty, of the man who, seeing those 
bright, beautiful creatures as their white, immac¬ 
ulate wings flash in the sunshine over the blue 
waves, can go out in a boat with his boys to teach 
them to become brutes in character by finding 
amusement—I say, again, dis-humanising amuse¬ 
ment — by wantonly murdering these fair birds of 
God, or cruelly wounding them, and letting them 
fly away to wait and die in lonely places ? ” 

And another paragraph which was sent me by a 
kind friend to our fellow-creatures a few days ago: 

“ The celebrated Russian novelist, Turgenieff, 
tells a most touching incident from his own life, 
which awakened in him sentiments that have colored 
all his writings with a deep and tender feeling. 

“ When Turgenieff was a boy of ten his father 
took him out one day birdshooting. As they 


154 This Mystical Life of Ours 

tramped across the brown stubble, a golden pheas¬ 
ant rose with a low whirr from the ground at his 
feet, and, with the joy of a sportsman throbbing 
through his veins, he raised his gun and fired, wild 
with excitement when the creature fell fluttering 
at his side. Life was ebbing fast, but the instinct 
of the mother was stronger than death itself, and 
with a feeble flutter of her wings the mother bird 
reached the nest where her young brood were 
huddled, unconscious of danger. Then, with such 
a look of pleading and reproach that his heart stood 
still at the ruin he had wrought—and never to his 
dying day did he forget the feeling of cruelty 
and guilt that came to him in that moment—the 
little brown head toppled over, and only the dead 
body of the mother shielded her nestlings. 

“ ‘ Father, father/ he cried, ‘ what have I done ? 5 
as he turned his horror-stricken face to his father. 
But not to his father’s eye had this little tragedy 
been enacted, and he said: ‘Well done, my son; 
that was well done for your first shot. You will 
soon be a fine sportsman/ 

“ ‘ Never, father; never again shall I destroy 
any living creature. If that is sport I will have 
none of it. Life is more beautiful to me than death, 
and since I cannot give life, I will not take it.’ ” 
And so, instead of putting into the hands of the 
child a gun or any other weapon that may be in¬ 
strumental in crippling, torturing, or taking the life 
of even a single animal, I would give him the field- 


Training Through the Animal World 155 

glass and the camera, and send him out to be a 
friend to the animals, to observe and study their 
characteristics, their habits, to learn from them 
those wonderful lessons that can be learned, and 
thus have his whole nature expand in admiration 
and love and care for them, and become thereby 
the truly manly and princely type of man, rather 
than the careless, callous, brutal type. 

Every Living Creature. 


XLV. 


TO BE AT PEACE. 

A deep interior meaning underlies the great truth, 
“ To be spiritually minded is life and peace.” To 
recognize the fact that we are spirit, and to live in 
this thought, is to be spiritually minded, and so to 
be in harmony and peace. Oh, the thousands of 
men and women all about us weary with care, 
troubled and ill at ease, running hither and thither 
to find peace, weary in body, soul, and mind; going 
to other countries, traveling the world over, coming 
back, and still not finding it. Of course they have 
not found it and they never will find it in this way, 
because they are looking for it where it is not. 
They are looking for it without when they should 
look within. Peace is to be found only within, and 
unless one find it there he will never find it at all. 

Peace lies not in the external world. It lies 
within one’s own soul. We may travel over many 
different avenues in pursuit of it, we may seek it 
through the channels of the bodily appetites and 
passions, we may seek it through all the channels 
of the external, we may chase for it hither and 
thither, but it will always be just beyond our grasp, 
because we are searching for it where it is not. In 
the degree, however, that we order the bodily appe- 


To be at Peace 


15 7 


tites and passions in accordance with the prompt¬ 
ings of the soul within will the higher forms of 
happiness and peace enter our lives; but in the de¬ 
gree that we fail in doing this will disease, suffering, 
and discontent enter in. 

To be at one with God is to be at peace. The 
child simplicity is the greatest agency in bringing 
this full and complete realization, the child sim¬ 
plicity that recognizes its true relations with the 
Father’s life. There are people I know who have 
come into such a conscious realization of their one¬ 
ness with this Infinite Life, this Spirit of Infinite 
Peace, that their lives are fairly bubbling over with 
joy. I have particularly in mind at this moment 
a comparatively young man who was an invalid for 
several years, his health completely broken with ner¬ 
vous exhaustion, who thought there was nothing in 
life worth living for, to whom everything and every¬ 
body presented a gloomy aspect, and he in turn 
presented a gloomy aspect to all with whom he 
came in contact. Not long ago he came into such 
a vital realization of his oneness with this Infinite 
Power, he opened himself so completely to its 
divine inflow, that to-day he is in perfect health, 
and frequently as I meet him now he cannot re¬ 
sist the impulse to cry out, “ Oh, it is a joy to be 
alive.” 

He who comes into this higher realization never 
has any fear, for he has always with him a sense 
of protection, and the very realization of this makes 


158 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


his protection complete. Of him it is true—“ No 
weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper;” 
“ There shall no ill come nigh thy dwelling;” “ Thou 
shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and 
the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.” 

These are the men and the women who seem to 
live charmed lives. The moment we fear anything 
we open the door for the entrance of the actualiza¬ 
tion of the very thing we fear. An animal will 
never harm a person who is absolutely fearless in 
regard to it. The instant he fears he opens himself 
to danger; and some animals, the dog for example, 
can instantly detect the element of fear, and this 
gives him the courage to do harm. In the degree 
that we come into a full realization of our oneness 
with this Infinite Power do we become calm and 
quiet, undisturbed by the little occurrences that be¬ 
fore so vex and annoy us. We are no longer dis¬ 
appointed in people, for we always read them aright. 
We have the power of penetrating into their very 
souls and seeing the underlying motives that are 
at work there. 

As soon as we are able to read people aright we 
will then cease to be disappointed in them, we will 
cease to place them on pedestals, for this can never 
be done without some attendant disappointment. 
The fall will necessarily come, sooner or later, and 
moreover, we are thus many times unfair to our 
friends. When we come into harmony with this 
Spirit of Peace, evil reports and apparent bad treat- 


To be at Peace 


159 


ment, either at the hands of friends or of enemies, 
will no longer disturb us. When we are conscious 
of the fact that in our life and our work we are 
true to that eternal principle of right, of truth, of 
justice that runs through all the universe, that 
unites and governs all, that always eventually pre¬ 
vails, then nothing of this kind can come nigh us, 
and come what may we will always be tranquil and 
undisturbed. 

The things that cause sorrow, and pain, and be¬ 
reavement will not be able to take the hold of us 
they now take, for true wisdom will enable us to see 
the proper place and know the right relations of all 
things. The loss of friends by the transition we 
call death will not cause sorrow to the soul that has 
come into this higher realization, for he knows that 
there is no such thing as death, for each one is not 
only a partaker, but an eternal partaker, of this In¬ 
finite Life. He knows that the mere falling away 
of the physical body by no means affects the real 
soul life. With a tranquil spirit born of a higher 
faith he can realize for himself, and to those less 
strong he can say: 

Loving friends! be wise and dry 
Straightway every weeping eye; 

What you left upon the bier 
Is not worth a single tear; 

’Tis a simple sea-shell; one 
Out of which the pearl has gone. 

The shell was nothing, leave it there; 

The pearl—the soul—was all, is here. 


160 This Mystical Life of Ours 

And so far as the element of separation is con¬ 
cerned, he realizes that to spirit there are no bounds, 
and that spiritual communion, whether between two 
persons in the body, or two persons, one in the body 
and one out of the body, is within the reach of all. 
In the degree that the higher spiritual life is real¬ 
ized can there be this higher spiritual communion. 

In the degree that we are filled with this Spirit 
of Peace by thus opening ourselves to its inflow 
does it pour through us, so that we carry it with us 
wherever we go. In the degree that we thus open 
ourselves do we become magnets to attract peace 
from all sources; and in the degree that we attract 
and embody it in ourselves are we able to give it 
forth to others. We can in this way become such 
perfect embodiments of peace that wherever we go 
we are continually shedding benedictions. There 
are people all around us who are continually giving 
out blessings and comfort, persons whose mere 
presence seems to change sorrow into joy, fear into 
courage, despair into hope, weakness into power. 

It is the one who has come into the realization 
of his own true self who carries this power with 
him and who radiates it wherever he goes—the one 
who, as we say, has found his center. And in all 
the great universe there is but one center—the In¬ 
finite Power that is working in and through all. 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XLVI. 


COURAGE BEGETS STRENGTH; FEAR 
BEGETS WEAKNESS. 

The one who then has found his centre is the one 
who has come into the realization of his oneness 
with this Infinite Power, the one who recognizes 
himself as a spiritual being, for God is spirit. 

Such is the man of power. Centred in the In¬ 
finite, he has thereby, so to speak, connected him¬ 
self with, he has attached his belts to, the great 
power-house of the universe. He is constantly 
drawing power to himself from all sources. For, 
thus centred, knowing himself, conscious of his own 
power, the thoughts that go from his mind are 
thoughts of strength; and by virtue of the law that 
like attracts like, he by his thoughts is continually 
attracting to himself from all quarters the aid of all 
whose thoughts are thoughts of strength, and in 
this way he is linking himself with this order of 
thought in the universe. 

And so to him that hath, to him shall be given. 
This is simply the working of a natural law. His 
strong, positive, and hence constructive thought is 
continually working success for him along all lines, 
and continually bringing to him help from all direc¬ 
tions. The things that he sees, that he creates in 


/ 


162 This Mystical Life of Ours 

the ideal, are through the agency of this strong con¬ 
structive thought continually clothing themselves, 
taking form, manifesting themselves in the material. 
Silent, unseen forces are at work which will sooner 
or later be made manifest in the visible. 

Fear and all thoughts of failure never suggest 
themselves to such a man; or if they do, they are 
immediately sent out of his mind, and so he is not 
influenced by this order of thought from without. 
He does not attract it to him. He is in another 
current of thought. Consequently the weakening, 
failure-bringing thoughts of the fearing, the vacil¬ 
lating, the pessimistic about him, have no influence 
upon him. The one who is of the negative, fearing 
kind not only has his energies and his physical 
agents weakened, or even paralyzed through the in¬ 
fluence of this kind of thought that is born within 
him, but he also in this way connects himself with 
this order of thought in the world about him. And in 
the degree that he does this does he become a victim 
to the weak, fearing, negative minds all around him. 
Instead of growing in power, he increases in weak¬ 
ness. He is in the same order of thought with those 
of whom it is true—and even that which they have 
shall be taken away from them. This again is 
simply the working of a natural law, the same as is 
its opposite. Fearing lest I lose even what I have 
I hide it away in a napkin. Very well. I must 
then pay the price of my “ fearing lest I lose.” 

Thoughts of strength both build strength from 


Courage and Fear 163 

within and attract it from without. Thoughts of 
weakness actualize weakness from within and at¬ 
tract it from without. Courage begets strength, 
fear begets weakness. And so courage begets suc¬ 
cess, fear begets failure. It is the man or the 
woman of faith, and hence of courage, who is the 
master of circumstances, and who makes his or her 
power felt in the world. It is the man or the woman 
who lacks faith and who as a consequence is weak¬ 
ened and crippled by fears and forebodings, who is 
the creature of all passing occurrences. 

What one lives in his invisible, thought world, 
he is continually actualizing in his visible, material 
world. If he would have any conditions different 
in the latter' he must make the necessary change in 
the former. A clear realization of this great fact 
would bring success to thousands of men and 
women who all about us are now in the depths of 
despair. It would bring health, abounding health 
and strength to thousands now diseased and suffer¬ 
ing. It would bring peace and joy to thousands 
now unhappy and ill at ease. 

And oh, the thousands all about us who are con¬ 
tinually living in the slavery of fear. The spirits 
within that should be strong and powerful, are 
rendered weak and impotent. Their energies are 
crippled, their efforts are paralyzed. “ Fear is 
everywhere — fear of want, fear of starvation, 
fear of public opinion, fear of private opinion, 
fear that what we own to-day may not be ours 


164 This Mystical Life of Ours 

to-morrow, fear of sickness, fear of death. Fear 
has become with millions a fixed habit. The 
thought is everywhere. The thought is thrown 
upon us from every direction. ... To live in 
continual dread, continual cringing, continual fear 
of anything, be it loss of love, loss of money, loss 
of position or situation, is to take the readiest means 
to lose what we fear we shall.” 

By fear nothing is to be gained, but on the con¬ 
trary, everything is to be lost. “ I know this is 
true,” says one, “ but I am given to fear; it’s nat¬ 
ural to me and I can’t help it.” Can’t help it! In 
saying this you indicate one great reason of your 
fear by showing that you do not even know your¬ 
self as yet. You must know yourself in order to 
know your powers, and not until you know them 
can you use them wisely and fully. Don’t say you 
can’t help it. If you think you can’t, the chances 
are that you can’t. If you think you can, and act in 
accordance with this thought, then not only are the 
chances that you can, but if you act fully in accord¬ 
ance with it, that you can and that you will is an 
absolute certainty. It was Virgil who in describing 
the crew which in his mind would win the race, said 
of them—They can because they think they can. In 
other words, this very attitude of mind on their 
part will infuse a spiritual power into their bodies 
that will give them the strength and endurance 
which will enable them to win. 

Then take the thought that you can ; take it 


Courage and Fear 


165 


merely as a seed-thought, if need be, plant it in 
your consciousness, tend it, cultivate it, and it will 
gradually reach out and gather strength from all 
quarters. It will focus and make positive and act¬ 
ive the spiritual force within you that is now scat¬ 
tered and of little avail. It will draw to itself force 
from without. It will draw to your aid the influ¬ 
ence of other minds of its own nature, minds that 
are fearless, strong, courageous. You will thus 
draw to yourself and connect yourself with this 
order of thought. If earnest and faithful, the time 
will soon come when all fear will lose its hold; 
and instead of being an embodiment of weakness 
and a creature of circumstances, you will find your¬ 
self a tower of strength and a master of circum¬ 
stances. 


In Tune with the Infinite. 


XLVII. 


“ AND WHAT IS MINE SHALL KNOW MY 
FACE/' 

We need more faith in every-day life—faith in 
the power that works for good, faith in the Infinite 
God, and hence faith in ourselves created in His 
image. And however things at times may seem to 
go, however dark at times appearances may be, the 
knowledge of the fact that “ the Supreme Power 
has us in its charge as it has the suns and endless 
systems of worlds in space,” will give us the su¬ 
preme faith that all is well with us, the same as all 
is well with the world. “ Thou wilt keep him in 
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” 

There is nothing firmer, and safer, and surer 
than Deity. Then, as we recognize the fact that 
we have it in our own hands to open ourselves 
ever more fully to this Infinite Power, and call upon 
it to manifest itself in and through us, we will find 
in ourselves an ever increasing sense of power. 
For in this way we are working in conjunction with 
it, and it in turn is working in conjunction with 
us. We are then led into the full realization of 
the fact that all things work together for good to 
those that love the good. Then the fears and fore- 


“ And What is Mine shall know My Face ” 167 


bodings that have dominated us in the past will be 
transmuted into faith, and faith when rightly under¬ 
stood and rightly used is a force before which noth¬ 
ing can stand. 

Materialism leads naturally to pessimism. And 
how could it do otherwise? A knowledge of the 
Spiritual Power working in and through us as well 
as in and through all things, a power that works for 
righteousness, leads to optimism. Pessimism leads 
to weakness. Optimism leads to power. The one 
who is centred in Deity is the one who not only 
outrides every storm, but who through the faith, 
and so, the conscious power that is in him, faces 
storm with the same calmness and serenity that he 
faces fair weather; for he knows well beforehand 
what the outcome will be. He knows that under¬ 
neath are the everlasting arms. He it is who realizes 
the truth of the injunction, “ Rest in the Lord, wait 
patiently for Him and He shall give thee thy heart’s 
desire.” All shall be given, simply given, to him 
who is ready to accept it. Can anything be clearer 
than this? 

In the degree, then, that we work in conjunction 
with the Supreme Power do we need the less to con¬ 
cern ourselves about results. To live in the full 
realization of this fact and all that attends it brings 
peace, a full, rich, abiding peace—a peace that 
makes the present complete, and that, going on be¬ 
fore, brings back the assurance that as our days, 
so shall our strength be. The one who is thus 


168 This Mystical Life of Ours 

centred, even in the face of all the unrest and the 
turmoil about us, can realize and say: 

* * * * * He * 

“I stay my haste, I make delays, 

For what avails this eager pace ? 

I stand amid eternal ways, 

And what is mine shall know my face. 

“Asleep, awake, by night or day, 

The friends I seek are seeking me; 

No wind can drive my bark astray, 

Nor change the tide of destiny. 

******* 

“The waters know their own, and draw 

The brooks that spring in yonder height; 

So flows the good with equal law 
Unto the soul of pure delight. 

“The stars come nightly to the sky; 

The tidal wave unto the sea; 

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, 

Can keep my own away from me.” 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XLVIII. 


HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT—ARE 
WE BOUND BY THEM? 

The true secret of power lies in keeping one’s 
connection with the God who worketh all things. 

Whatever can’t be done in the physical can be 
done in the spiritual. And in direct proportion as 
a man recognizes himself as spirit, and lives accord¬ 
ingly, is he able to transcend in power the. man 
who recognizes himself merely as material. All the 
sacred literature of the world is teeming with ex¬ 
amples of what we call miracles. They are not con¬ 
fined to any particular times or places. There is 
no age of miracles in distinction from any other 
period that may be an age of miracles. Whatever 
has been done in the world’s history can be done 
again through the operation of the same laws and 
forces. These miracles were performed not by 
those who were more than men, but by those who 
through the recognition of their oneness with God 
became God-men, so that the higher forces and 
powers worked through them. 

For what, let us ask, is a miracle? Is it some¬ 
thing supernatural ? Supernatural only in the 
sense of being above the natural, or rather, above 


170 This Mystical Life of Ours 

that which is natural to man in his ordinary state. 
A miracle is nothing more nor less than this. One 
who has come into a knowledge of his true identity, 
of his oneness with the all-pervading Wisdom and 
Power, thus makes it possible for laws higher than 
the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him. 
These laws he makes use of; the people see the re¬ 
sults, and by virtue of their own limitations, call 
them miracles and speak of the person who performs 
these apparently supernatural works as a supernat¬ 
ural being. But they as supernatural beings could 
themselves perform these supernatural works if 
they would open themselves to the recognition of the 
same laws, and consequently to the realization of 
the same possibilities and powers. And let us also 
remember that the supernatural of yesterday be¬ 
comes, as in the process of evolution we advance 
from the lower to the higher, from the more 
material to the more spiritual, the common and the 
natural of to-day, and what seems to be the super¬ 
natural of to-day becomes in the same way the nat¬ 
ural of to-morrow, and so on through the ages. 
Yes, it is the God-man who does the things that 
appear supernatural, the man who by virtue of his 
realization of the higher powers transcends the ma¬ 
jority and so stands out among them. But any 
power that is possible to one human soul is possible 
to another. The same laws operate in every life. 
We can be men and women of power or we can be 
men and women of impotence. The moment one 


Heredity and Environment 171 

vitally grasps the fact that he can rise he will rise, 
and he can have absolutely no limitations other than 
the limitations he sets to himself. Cream always 
rises to the top. It rises simply because it is the 
nature of cream to rise. 

We hear much said of “ environment.” We need 
to realize that environment should never be allowed 
to make the man, but that man should always, and 
always can , condition the environment. When we 
realize this we will find that many times it is not 
necessary to take ourselves out of any particular 
environment, because we may yet have a work to 
do there; but by the very force we carry with us 
we can so afifect and change matters that we will 
have an entirely new set of conditions in an old 
environment. 

The same is true in regard to “ hereditary ” 
traits and influences. We sometimes hear the 
question asked, “ Can they be overcome ? ” Only 
the one who doesn’t yet know himself can ask a 
question such as this. If we entertain and live in 
the belief that they cannot be overcome, then the 
chances are that they will always remain. The mo¬ 
ment, however, that we come into a realization of 
our true selves, and so of the tremendous powers 
and forces within—the powers and forces of the 
mind and spirit—hereditary traits and influences 
that are harmful in nature will begin to lessen, and 
will disappear with a rapidity directly in proportion 
to the completeness of this realization. 


172 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


There is no thing we cannot overcome; 

Say not thy evil instinct is inherited, 

Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life for¬ 
lorn, 

And calls down punishment that is not merited. 

Back of thy parents and grandparents lies 
The Great Eternal Will! That too is thine 
Inheritance,—strong, beautiful, divine, 

Sure lever of success for one who tries. 

Earth has no claim the soul cannot contest; 

Know thyself part of the Eternal Source; 

Naught can stand before thy spirit’s force; 

The soul’s Divine Inheritance is best.” 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


XLIX. 


PRESERVING ONE’S INDIVIDUALITY. 

Again there are many who are living far below 
their possibilities because they are continually hand¬ 
ing over their individualities to others. Do you 
want to be a power in the world? Then be your¬ 
self. Don’t class yourself, don’t allow yourself to 
be classed among the second-hand , among the they- 
say people. Be true to the highest within your own 
soul, and then allow yourself to be governed by no 
customs* or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made 
rules that are not founded upon principle. Those 
things that are founded upon principle will be ob¬ 
served by the right-minded, the right-hearted man 
or woman, in any case. 

Don’t surrender your individuality, which is your 
greatest agent of power, to the customs and conven¬ 
tionalities that have gotten their life from the great 
mass of those who haven’t enough force to preserve 
their individualities—those who in other words 
have given them over as ingredients to the “ mush 
of concession ” which one of our greatest writers 
has said characterizes our modern society. If you 
do surrender your individuality in this way, you 
simply aid in increasing the undesirable conditions; 
in payment for this you become a slave, and the 


174 This Mystical Life of Ours 

chances are that in time you will be unable to hold 
even the respect of those whom you in this way try 
to please. 

If you preserve your individuality then you be¬ 
come a master, and if wise and discreet, your influ¬ 
ence and power will be an aid in bringing about a 
higher, a better, and a more healthy set of condi¬ 
tions in the world. All people, moreover, will 
think more of you, will honor you more highly for 
doing this than if you show your weakness by con¬ 
tributing yourself to the same “ mush of conces¬ 
sion ” that so many of them are contributing them¬ 
selves to. With all classes of people you will then 
have an influence. “ A great style of hero draws 
equally all classes, all extremes of society to him, 
till we say the very dogs believe in him.” 

To be one’s self is the only worthy, and by all 
means the only satisfactory, thing to be. 

“ When we appeal to the Supreme and our life 
is governed by a principle, we are not governed 
either by fear of public opinion or loss of others’ 
approbation, and we may be sure that the Supreme 
will sustain us. If in any way we try to live to suit 
others we never shall suit them, and the more we 
try the more unreasonable and exacting do they be¬ 
come. The government of your life is a matter 
that lies entirely between God and yourself, and 
when your life is swayed and influenced from any 
other source you are on the wrong path.” When 
we find the kingdom within and become centred in 


Preserving One's Individuality 175 

the Infinite, then we become a law unto ourselves. 
When we become a law unto ourselves, then we are 
able to bring others to a knowledge of laws higher 
than they are governed or many times even enslaved 
by. 

When we have found this centre, then that beau¬ 
tiful simplicity, at once the charm and the power 
of a truly great personality, enters into our lives. 
Then all striving for effect—that sure indicator of 
weakness and a lack of genuine power—is absent. 
This striving for effect that is so common is always 
an indicator of a lack of something. It brings to 
mind the man who rides behind a dock-tailed horse. 
Conscious of the fact that there is not enough in 
himself to attract attention, in common with a num¬ 
ber of other weaklings, he adopts the brutal method 
of having his horse’s tail sawed off, that its unnat¬ 
ural, odd appearance may attract from people the 
attention that he of himself is unable to secure. 

But the one who strives for effect is always 
fooled more than he succeeds in fooling others. 
The man and the woman of true wisdom and in¬ 
sight can always see the causes that prompt, the 
motives that underlie the acts of all with whom he 
or she comes in contact. “ He is great who is what 
he is from nature and who never reminds us of 
others.” 

The men and the women who are truly awake to 
the real powers within are the men and women who 
seem to be doing so little, yet who in reality are 


176 This Mystical Life of Ours 

doing so much. They seem to be doing so little 
because they are working with higher agencies, and 
yet are doing so much because of this very fact. 
They do their work on the higher plane. They 
keep so completely their connection with the Infinite 
Power that It does the work for them and they are 
relieved of the responsibility. They are the care¬ 
less people. They are careless because it is the In¬ 
finite Power that is working through them, and with 
this Infinite Power they are simply co-operating. 

In Tune with the Infinite . 


L. 


EXCLUSIVENESS AND INCLUSIVENESS: 
WHAT THEY INDICATE. 

When we come fully to realize the great fact 
that all evil and error and sin with all their conse¬ 
quent sufferings come through ignorance, then 
wherever we see a manifestation of these in what¬ 
ever form, if our hearts are right, we will have com¬ 
passion—sympathy and compassion for the one in 
whom we see them. Compassion will then change 
itself into love, and love will manifest itself in kindly 
service. Such is the divine method. And so in¬ 
stead of .aiding in trampling and keeping a weaker 
one down, we will hold him up until he can stand 
alone and become the master. 

By example and not by precept. By living, not 
by preaching. By doing, not by professing. By 
living the life, not by dogmatizing as to how it 
should be lived. There is no contagion equal to the 
contagion of life. Whatever we sow, that shall we 
also reap, and each thing sown produces of its kind. 
We can kill not only by doing another bodily injury 
directly, but we can and we do kill by every antag¬ 
onistic thought. Not only do we thus kill, but 
while we kill we suicide. Many a man has been 
made sick by having the ill thoughts of a number of 


178 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


people centred upon him; some have been actually 
killed. Put hatred into the world and we make it 
a literal hell. Put love into the world and heaven 
with all its beauties and glories becomes a reality. 

Not to love is not to live, or it is to live a living 
death. The life that goes out in love to all is the 
life that is full, and rich, and continually expanding 
in beauty and in power. Such is the life that be¬ 
comes ever more inclusive, and hence larger in its 
scope and influence. The larger the man and the 
woman, the more inclusive they are in their love 
and their friendships. The smaller the man and the 
woman, the more dwarfed and dwindling their na¬ 
tures, the more they pride themselves upon their 
“ exclusiveness.” Any one—a fool or an idiot— 
can be exclusive. It comes easy. It takes and it 
signifies a large nature to be universal, to be inclu¬ 
sive. Only the man or the woman of a small, per¬ 
sonal, self-centred, self-seeking nature is exclusive. 
The man or the woman of a large, royal, unself- 
centred nature never is. The small nature is the 
one that continually strives for effect. The larger 
nature never does. The one goes here and there in 
order to gain recognition, in order to attach him¬ 
self to the world. The other stays at home and 
draws the world to him. The one loves merely him¬ 
self. The other loves all the world; but in his larger 
love for all the world he finds himself included. 

Verily, then, the more one loves the nearer he ap¬ 
proaches to God, for God is the spirit of infinite love. 


Exclusiveness and Inclusiveness 179 

And when we come into the realization of our one¬ 
ness with this Infinite Spirit, then divine love so fills 
us that, enriching and enrapturing our own lives, 
from them it flows out to enrich the life of all the 
world. 

In coming into the realization of our oneness with 
the Infinite Life, we are brought at once into right 
relations with our fellowmen. We are brought into 
harmony with the great law, that we find our own 
lives in losing them in the service of others. We 
are brought to a knowledge of the fact that all life 
is one, and so that we are all parts of the one great 
whole. We then realize that we can’t do for another 
without at the same time doing for ourselves. We 
also realize that we cannot do harm to another with¬ 
out by that very act doing harm to ourselves. We 
realize that the man who lives to himself alone lives 
a little, dwarfed, and stunted life, because he has no 
part in this larger life of humanity. But the one 
who in service loses his own life in this larger life, 
has his own life increased and enriched a thousand 
or a million fold, and every joy, every happiness, 
everything of value coming to each member of this 
greater whole comes as such to him, for he has a 
part in the life of each and all. 

And here let a word be said in regard to true 
service. Peter and John were one day going up to 
the temple, and as they were entering the gate they 
were met by a poor cripple who asked them for 
alms. Instead of giving him something to supply 


180 This Mystical Life of Ours 

the day’s needs and then leaving him in the same 
dependent condition for the morrow and the mor¬ 
row, Peter did him a real service, and a real serv¬ 
ice for all mankind by saying: Silver and gold have 
I none, but such as I have I give unto thee. And 
then he made him whole. He thus brought him into 
the condition where he could help himself. In other 
words, the greatest service we can do for another 
is to help him to help himself. To help him directly 
might be weakening, though not necessarily. It 
depends entirely upon circumstances. But to help 
one to help himself is never weakening, but always 
encouraging and strengthening, because it leads 
him to a larger and stronger life. 

In Tune with the Infinite. 


LI. 


THE NATURE OF REAL RICHES. 

The one who has come into the realization of the 
higher life no longer has a desire for the accumu¬ 
lation of enormous wealth, any more than he has a 
desire for any other excess. In the degree that he 
comes into the recognition of the fact that he is 
wealthy within, external wealth becomes less im¬ 
portant in his estimation. When he comes into the 
realization of the fact that there is a source within 
from which he can put forth a power to call to him 
and actualize in his hands at any time a sufficient 
supply for all his needs, he no longer burdens him¬ 
self with vast material accumulations that require 
his constant care and attention, and thus take his 
time and his thought from the real things of life. 
In other words, he first finds the kingdom , and he 
realizes that when he has found this, all other 
things follow in full measure. 

Wealth beyond a certain amount cannot be used, 
and when it cannot be used it then becomes a hind¬ 
rance rather than an aid, a curse rather than a bless¬ 
ing. All about us are persons with lives now 
stunted and dwarfed who could make them rich and 
beautiful, filled with a perennial joy, if they would 


182 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


begin wisely to use that which they have spent the 
greater portion of their lives in accumulating. 

The man who accumulates during his entire life, 
and who leaves even all when he goes out for 
“ benevolent purposes,” comes far short of the ideal 
life. It is but a poor excuse of a life. It is not 
especially commendable in me to give a pair of old, 
worn-out shoes that I shall never use again to an¬ 
other who is in need of shoes. But it is commend¬ 
able, if indeed doing anything we ought to do can 
be spoken of as being commendable, it is commend¬ 
able for me to give a good pair of strong shoes to the 
man who in the midst of a severe winter is practi¬ 
cally shoeless, the man who is exerting every effort 
to earn an honest living and thereby take care of his 
family’s needs. And if in giving the shoes I also 
give myself, he then has a double gift, and I a 
double blessing. 

There is no wiser use that those who have great 
accumulations can make of them than wisely to put 
them into life, into character, day by day while they 
live. In this way their lives will be continually en¬ 
riched and increased. The time will come when it 
will be regarded as a disgrace for a man to die and 
leave vast accumulations behind him. 

Many a person is living in a palace to-day who 
in the real life is poorer than many a one who has 
not even a roof to cover him. A man may own and 
live in a palace, but the palace for him may be a 
poorhouse still. 


The Nature of Real Riches 183 

Moth and rust are nature’s wise provisions— 
God’s methods — for disintegrating and scattering, 
in this way getting ready for use in new forms, that 
which is hoarded and consequently serving no use. 
There is also a great law continually operating 
whose effects are to dwarf and deaden the powers 
of true enjoyment, as well as all the higher facul¬ 
ties of the one who hoards. 

Multitudes of people are continually keeping away 
from them higher and better things because they 
are forever clinging on to the old. If they would 
use and pass on the old, room would be made for 
new things to come. Hoarding always brings loss 
in one form or another. Using, wisely using, brings 
an ever renewing gain. 

If the tree should as ignorantly and as greed¬ 
ily hold on to this year’s leaves when they have 
served their purpose, where would be the full and 
beautiful new life that will be put forth in the 
spring? Gradual decay and finally death would be 
the result. If the tree is already dead, then it may 
perhaps be well enough for it to cling on to the old, 
for no new leaves will come. But as long as the life 
in the tree is active, it is necessary that it rid itself 
of the old ones, that room may be made for the new. 

Opulence is the law of the universe, an abundant 
supply for every need if nothing is put in the way of 
its coming. The natural and the normal life for us 
is this — To have such a fulness of life and power 
by living so continually in the realization of our 


184 This Mystical Life of Ours 

oneness with the Infinite Life and Power that we 
find ourselves in the constant possession of an abun¬ 
dant supply of all things needed. 

Then not by hoarding but by wisely using and rid¬ 
ding ourselves of things as they come, an ever re¬ 
newing supply will be ours, a supply far better 
adapted to present needs than the old could possibly 
be. In this way we not only come into possession 
of the richest treasures of the Infinite Good our¬ 
selves, but we also become open channels through 
which they can flow to others. 

In Tune with the Infinite . 


LII. 


A METHOD OF ATTAINMENT. 

A living insight into the fact of the essential unity 
of the human life with the Divine Life is the pro- 
foundest knowledge that man can attain to. This 
as a mere intellectual perception, however, as a mere 
dead theory, amounts to but little, if indeed to any¬ 
thing at all, so far as bearing fruit in every-day life 
is concerned. It is the vital, living realization of 
this great transcendent truth in the life of each one 
that makes it a mighty moving and moulding force 
in his life. 

It is only through this living realization of the 
essential unity of our life with the Father’s life that 
true blessedness, and even true peace and happiness, 
can be found. The sooner, then, that we come into 
it, and thus live the life of the spirit, the better, for 
neither will they come nor can they be found in any 
other way. There is, moreover, no time either in 
this form of life, or in any other form, that we can 
any more readily come into it, and thereby into all 
that follows. And when this fountain of Divine 
Life is once fully opened within us, it can never 
again be dried up, and we can rest assured that it 
will at all times uphold us in peace and bear us on 
in safety. And however strange or unaccountable 


186 This Mystical Life of Ours 

at times occurrences may appear, we can rest in a 
triumphant security, knowing that only good can 
come, for in God’s life there is only good, and in 
God’s life we are now living, and there we shall live 
forever. 

There is a simple method which will aid us 
greatly in coming into the realization we have been 
considering. So simple is it that thousands and in¬ 
deed millions have passed it by, looking, as is so 
generally our custom, for agencies of at least appar¬ 
ently greater power; we so frequently and so univer¬ 
sally forget that the greatest things in life are the 
most simple. 

The method is this: wherever you are, whatever 
doing, walking along the street or through the fields, 
at work of any kind, falling off to or awaking from 
sleep, setting about any undertaking, in doubt as to 
what course to pursue at any particular time, in 
brief, whatever it may be, carry with you this 
thought: It is the Father that worketh in me, my 
Father works and I work. This is the thought so 
continually used by Jesus, who came into the fullest 
realization of the oneness of his life with the God- 
life that any one who has lived in the world thus 
far has come into, and it is given because it is so 
simple. From it each can make his own formula. 
Jesus’ term was “ the Father.” Many will likewise 
find themselves naturally using the same term and 
will find it becoming very precious to them. Others 
will find themselves using other terms for the same 


A Method of Attainment 187 

conception and thought: It is the Father that 
worketh in me, my Father works and I work. In 
other words, It is the spirit of Infinite Life and 
Power that is back of all, working in and through 
all, the life and animating power of all—God—that 
worketh in me, and I do as I am directed and em¬ 
powered by It. 

In this way we open ourselves, and become con¬ 
sciously awake to the Infinite Life and Power that 
is ever waiting and ready to direct and work in our 
lives, if we will merely put ourselves into the atti¬ 
tude whereby It can work in them. In this way we 
open ourselves so that It can speak and manifest 
to and through us. This It is ever ready to do if 
we will but make for It the right conditions. By 
carrying with us this thought, by holding ourselves 
in this attitude of mind consciously for awhile, by 
repeating it even in so many words now and then 
at first, we will find it in time becoming our habitual 
thought, and will find ourselves living in it without 
the conscious effort that we have to make at first, 
and we will in time find ourselves almost uncon¬ 
sciously living in it continually. Thus God as a 
living presence, as a guiding, animating power, be¬ 
comes an actuality in our lives. The conscious 
presence of God in our lives, which is the essence, 
indeed the sum and substance of all religion, then 
becomes a reality, and all wisdom and all power will 
be given us as we are able to appropriate and use 
them wisely; if for merely selfish, personal ends, 


188 


This Mystical Life of Ours 


they will be withheld; if for the greatest aid and 
service for the world, we will find them continually 
increasing. 

With this higher realization comes more and 
more the simple, child-like spirit. With Jesus we 
realize—Of myself I can do nothing, it is the Father 
within me that doeth His work. In ourselves we 
are and can do nothing; in God we can do all things. 
We never can be in the condition—in God—until 
through this higher realization God becomes a con¬ 
scious , living reality in our lives. 

Faithfulness to this simple method will bring 
about a complete change in great numbers of lives. 
Each one for himself can test its efficacy in a very 
short time. It is the highway upon which many 
will enter that will by easy stages take them into the 
realization of the highest life that can be attained 
to. To set one’s face in the right direction, and 
then simply to travel on, will in time bring him into 
the realization of the highest life that can be even 
conceived of—it is the secret of all attainment. 

The Greatest Thing Ever Known. 


By RALPH WALDO TRINE. 


“The Life Books.” 

What All The World’s A-Seeking. 

Its purpose is distinctly practical. It is most fas¬ 
cinatingly written, and deserves the remarkable suc¬ 
cess it has achieved. — The Review op Reviews. 

The volume abounds in passages of great beauty 
and strength; but the striking feature of the book 
is, after all, the solid, sensible, healthy exposition of 
the one theme it is written to enforce.— New York 
Independent. 

This is a book among a thousand for its inspiring 
message, and is eminently worthy of a vast audience. 
You will miss much if you miss reading its truth¬ 
laden pages. — Cumberland Presbyterian. 

In Tune With the Infinite 

It is one of the simplest, clearest works ever writ¬ 
ten, dealing with the power of the interior forces in 
moulding the every-day conditions of life.— San 
Francisco Bulletin. 

... It immediately suggests the works of Drum¬ 
mond, but shows a decided advance upon the ground 
which he made familiar to mankind; it not only re¬ 
veals the author’s recognition of spiritual law, but in 
certain instances shows his rare and remarkable un¬ 
derstanding of the nature and action of such law; 
the preface alone shows his high intuition, and the 
book proves his ability to achieve his purpose in a 
marvellous degree. — Boston Daily Evening Tran¬ 
script. 

Mr. Trine can write well upon such topics as this. 
He is alive, vigorous, cheery, confident. The work 
lias distinctiveness in its style and method.— The 
Literary World, London. 


The above books are beautifully and durably bound 
in gray-green raised cloth, stamped in deep 
old-green and gold , with gilt top. 

Price , $>i.2 5 per volume. 


THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., 

NEW YORK. 






By RALPH WALDO TRINE. 


The "Life” Booklets 

The Greatest Thing Ever Known. 

The moment we fully and vitally realize who and 
what we are we then begin to build our own world 
even as God builds His. — From Title-page. 

. . . It unfolds the secret of our underlying 
strength, and shows what it is that gives us power 
to fulfil the real and living purposes of our being. 
— The New Christianity. 

Every Living Creature. 

The tender and humane passion in the human 
heart is too precious a quality to allow it to be 
hardened or effaced by practices such as we so often 
indulge in. — From Title-page. 

An eloquent appeal and an able argument for 
justice and mercy to our dumb fellow-creatures. A 
good book for those whose characters are being 
formed, and for all who love justice and right.— 
Religio-Philosophical Journal. 

Character-Building Thought Power. 

A thought, good or evil, an act, in time a habit, 
so runs life’s law; what you live in your thought- 
world, that, sooner or later, you will find objectified 
in your life.— From Title-page. 

In “ Character-Building Thought Power ” Mr. 
Trine demonstrates the power of mental habits, 
and shows how by daily effort we may tiain our¬ 
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